Note 25 — Chapter I · THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE.

“On a très judicieusement remarqué sur celle-ci,” says M. Nodier, “que la seule induction qui en résultât naturellement, fort concluante pour la langue primitive et immodifiable des chèvres ne prouvoit rien en faveur de la première langue de l’homme; puisque les chèvres formoient elles-mêmes d’une manière très-distincte les deux articulations dont ces enfants avoient composé leur étroit vocabulaire.” Sir Gardner Wilkinson discredits the whole story, and supposes that it originated among the Greek ciceroni in Egypt, because he thinks that children, unless artificially instructed, would not have been able to get beyond the labial sound “be.” (Rawlinson’s Herodotus, i. 251.) Surely this is merely a begging of the question. The fact that the inference from the experiment was one unfavourable to the national vanity of the Egyptians, is only one of the reasons which induce us to credit its reality. Larcher (ad loc.) rightly regards the ος as merely the Greek termination.