In respect to this subject, which has excited human curiosity for centuries without satiation, there appear to me (when we have eliminated old or abandoned hypotheses) to be only two theories which have any solidity: the one presupposes instinct; the other a slow evolution. I. It must be remarked that if the partisans of the first theory seem at the outset to have frankly admitted innate disposition (the fundamental characteristic of instinct), it is more difficult to distinguish between some of the later writers and the evolutionists. Thus it has been said: speech is a necessary product in which neither reflexion nor will participate, and which is derived from a secret instinct in man (Heyse). Renan sustained a similar thesis. For Max Müller, “man is born speaking, as he is born thinking; speech marks the transition from (concrete) intuitions to ideas; it is a fact in the development of the mind; it is created with no distinct consciousness of means and end.” For Steinthal, on the contrary, “language is neither an invention nor an innate product; man creates it himself, but it is not begotten of the reflecting mind.” Through all these formulæ, and others somewhat tinged with mysticism, we can discover but one point of fact, analogous to that which states that it is in the nature of the bee to form its comb, of the spider to weave its web. The last word of the enigma is unconscious activity, and whether directly, or by evasions, this school must return to innate faculties. A somewhat recent theory,—that of L. Noiré,[46]—is distinct from the foregoing. In these, speech is the direct (although, it is true, unconscious) expression of intelligence; for Noiré, on the other hand, it is the outcome of will. “Language is the result of _association_, of community of feeling, of a sympathetic activity which, at the outset, was accompanied by sounds...; it is the child of _will_ and not of sensation.” Speech is derived from community of action, from the collaboration of primitive men, from the common use of their activities. When our muscles are in action, we feel it a relief to utter sounds. The men who work together, the peasants who dig or thresh the grain, sailors rowing, soldiers marching, emit more or less vibrant articulations, sounds, exclamations, humming, songs, etc. These sounds present the requisite characters of the constitution of articulate language; they are common to all; they are intelligible, being associated by all with the same acts. Action, according to Noiré, is the primitive element in all language. Human labor is the content of primitive roots; to cut, knock, dig, hollow, weave, row, etc. Although Max Müller adhered almost unreservedly to this hypothesis, it has, like all others, encountered much criticism which we need not dwell on. Is it probable, it has been asked, that the first names should have been for acts only, not for objects? How explain the synonyms and homonyms so frequent in primitive language? etc.