“The child, who was just beginning to speak, called a duck ‘quack’; and, by special association, it also called water ‘quack.’ By an appreciation of the resemblance of qualities, it next extended the term ‘quack’ to denote all birds and insects on the one hand, and all fluid substances on the other. Lastly, by a still more delicate appreciation of resemblance, the child eventually called all coins ‘quack,’ because on the back of a French sou it had once seen the representation of an eagle. Hence, to the child, the sign ‘quack,’ from having originally had a very specialized meaning, became more and more extended in its signification, until it now serves to designate such apparently different objects as ‘fly,’ ‘wine,’ and ‘coin.’” Now, if any such process of extending or generalizing aboriginally onomatopoetic terms were to have taken place among the primitive framers of human speech, how hopeless would be the task of the philologist who should now attempt to find the onomatopoetic root! Yet, as above observed, not only may we be perfectly certain that such extensions of aboriginal onomatopoetic terms must have taken place, if any such terms were ever in existence at all (and this cannot be doubted), but also that it must have been almost a necessary condition to the survival of an onomatopoetic term as a root that such an extension of its meaning should have taken place. In other words, we can see very good reason to conclude that, as a rule, only those instances of primitive onomatopœia can have survived as roots, which must long ago have had their onomatopoetic origin hopelessly obscured. So that nowhere so much as in this case should we be prepared to entertain the general principle of philological research, that, as Goethe graphically states it, the original meanings of words become gradually worn out, like the image and superscription of a coin.[198] In view of such considerations, my only wonder is that this origin admits of being traced so often as it does, even as far back as the comparatively recent times when a pastoral people coined the terms which afterwards constituted the roots of Sanskrit. _Kas_, to cough; _kshu_, to sneeze; _proth_, to snort; _ma_, to bleat, and not a few others, are conceded, even by Professor Max Müller, to be of obviously imitative origin. In the present connection, however, it is of interest to notice how this authority deals with such cases. He says:—“Not one of them is of any importance in helping us to account for real words in Sanskrit. Most of them have had no offspring at all, others have had a few descendants, mostly sterile. Their history shows clearly how far the influence of onomatopœia may go, and if once we know its legitimate sphere, we shall be less likely to wish to extend it beyond its proper limits.”[199]