II. ‘Another law, which played a no less essential part in the creation of language, was _the association[75] of ideas_. In virtue of this law, the sound which accompanied an intuition, associated itself in the soul with the intuition itself, so closely that the sound and the intuition presented themselves to the consciousness as _inseparable_, and were equally inseparable in the recollection.’ This was the second step.
III. Finally, the word became a middle term of reminiscence, a tach between the external object and the inward impression. “The sound[76] became _a word_ by forming a bond between the image obtained by the vision, and the image preserved in the memory; in other words, _it acquired significance, and became an element of language_. The image of the remembrance, and the image of the vision, are not wholly identical; _e.g._, I see a horse; _no_ other horse that I have ever seen resembles it absolutely in colour, size, &c.: the general conception recalled by the word ‘horse’ involves only the abstracted[77] attributes common to all the animals of the same genus. It is this collection of common attributes that constitutes the significance of the sound.”
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.