For my own part, I think it highly probable that there is an element of truth in the Yeo-he-ho theory, although I deem it in the last degree improbable that imitative sounds of this kind constituted the _only_ source of aboriginal speech. At the most, it seems to me, this branch of onomatopœia can be accredited with supporting but a small proportional part of aboriginal language-growth. Nevertheless, as already observed, I can have no doubt at all that the principle of onomatopœia in all its branches has been the most important of all principles which were concerned in the first genesis of speech. That is to say, I fully agree with the almost unanimous voice of philological authority on this matter, which may be tersely expressed by allowing Professor Whitney to act as spokesman. “Beyond all reasonable question, there was a positively long period of purely imitative signs, and a longer one of mixed imitative and traditional ones, the latter gradually gaining upon the former, before the present condition of things was reached, when the production of new signs by imitation is only sporadic and of the utmost rarity, and all language-signs besides are traditional, their increase in any community being solely caused by variation and combination, and by borrowing from other communities.”[209] But now, having thus stated as emphatically as possible my acceptance of the theory of onomatopœia, I have to express dissent from many of its more earnest advocates where they represent that it is necessarily the only theory to be entertained. In other words, I do not agree with the dogma that articulate speech cannot possibly have had any source, or sources, other than that which is supplied by vocal imitations.[210] For, on merely antecedent grounds, I can see no adequate reason for arbitrarily excluding the possibility of arbitrary invention. If even civilized children, who are not under the discipline of the “mother of invention,” will coin a language of their own in which the element of onomatopœia is barely traceable;[211] and if uneducated deaf-mutes will spontaneously devise articulate sounds which are necessarily destitute of any imitative origin;[212] I do not see why it should be held antecedently impossible that primitive man can have found any other means of word-formation than that which is supplied by mimicry. Therefore, while I fully agree with Professor Wundt in holding that the question before us is one to be dealt with by psychology rather than philology (seeing that language cannot record the conditions of its own birth, and that so many causes have been at work to obliterate aboriginal onomatopœia), I cannot follow him where he argues that on grounds of psychology there is no room for any other inference than that the principle of onomatopœia in its widest sense must have constituted the sole origin of significant articulation.[213]