The hostility which Professor Max Müller has displayed to the onomatopoetic theory of the origin of language is the more remarkable, because in his latest work he has enthusiastically embraced a special branch of this theory, which has been put forward by M. Noiré. This special branch of the onomatopoetic theory is that articulate sign-making had its origin in sounds which are made by bodies of men when engaged in some common occupation. When sailors row, soldiers march, builders co-operate in pulling or in lifting, &c., there is always a tendency to give vent to appropriate sounds, which the nature of the occupation usually breaks up into rhythmic periods. “These utterances, noises, shouts, hummings, or songs are a kind of natural reaction against the inward disturbance caused by muscular effort. They are the almost involuntary vibrations of the voice, corresponding to the more or less regular movements of our whole bodily frame.” The hypothesis, therefore, is that sounds thus naturally evolved, and differing with different occupations, would sooner or later come to be conventionally used as the names of these different occupations. And, if thus used habitually, they would be virtually the same as words, inasmuch as they would not merely admit of immediate understanding on the part of others, but, what is even of more importance, they would, by the mere fact of such conventional usage of names, elevate what had previously been but a receptual appreciation of an act into a pre-conceptual designation of it. Now, I say that this hypothesis, whatever may be thought as to its probability, is clearly but a special branch of the general theory of onomatopœia. So that primitive names were intentionally imitative of natural sounds, for all the purposes of onomatopoetic theory it makes no difference whether such sounds were made by natural objects or by man himself. Nor, of the natural sounds which were made by man himself, does it in any way affect this theory whether the naturally human sounds were “interjectional” only, “co-operative” only, or sometimes one and sometimes the other. If, following the example set by Professor Max Müller, I may be allowed to designate Noiré’s special branch of the onomatopoetic theory as the Yeo-he-ho theory, it appears to me impossible to distinguish it in any essential particular from those other branches which are called by him the Bow-wow and Pooh-pooh theories—_i.e._ the imitative and the interjectional. Yet he has become as ardent a supporter of the one branch as he was a vehement opponent of the others.[208]