The eighteenth century decided that this way of treating a scientific question left much to be desired; it resulted in a _cul de sac_, and a fresh beginning had to be made. Some philosophers, thinking to simplify matters, affirmed that primitive man, tired of wandering through woods like other animals, decided to group themselves into companies; the members of this society, feeling the necessity of making themselves mutually understood, expressed themselves at first by the aid of signs and gestures, then by sounds peculiar to the things denoted, afterwards, in one way or another, actual words were pronounced. This reasoning was used in the eighteenth century, and not knowing where to find better, those who employed it felt satisfied with their perspicacity; language which was formerly considered as a gift direct from God, became a physiological endowment, a conventional art; this century had an intense horror of the supernatural, so that it readily accepted any system in which God did not appear. The lack of reflection shown in the building up of these hypotheses concerning the commencement of humanity has been severely criticised, and that they were very superficial must be conceded. It is equally clear that all these tentative efforts had this in common, that they were the results of the influence on immature minds of the period, of the necessity of explaining the awakening of human reason in a rational manner. The search was continued. At last the nineteenth century considered that a solution had been found. Certain ideas which had received attention during divers periods were now collected, sorted, re-examined more closely, and classified, and from these labours there arose the two theories of interjection and imitation. According to the first, language consists of sounds drawn involuntarily from man by his emotions and feelings; by degrees man became accustomed to reproduce similar exclamations when wishing to express the same feelings, and these exclamations would serve as the roots of words; this is the interjectional theory. The imitative or onomatopœic proceeds from another source; when man was confronted by all the objects of the exterior world he began to imitate the sounds emitted, such as the cries of various animals, the whistling of the wind, the fall of a stone; the many sounds which fill the air were reproduced by the human voice and formed the basis for future words. Objections to both of these theories are not lacking. If emotions such as joy, pain, anger, love, disgust--or if physical sensations such as result from the sting of a bee or from a blow of the fist, could furnish the roots of a language, and if it were the same with the imitation of noises produced by nature, the sounds of the words should retain a definite impress of these emotions and feelings, and should reproduce, if only approximately, these various noises. Even if we admit that a small number of primitive men set themselves to imitate the murmur of the