Omaha daily bee., 1910-02-20

IAnM 80 WV 6hb HANb 10 NNhnAahAle I
- waging around us and that the
lXS8S4E progress OF society is marked
49, by the steadily advancing out
posts of knowledge and truth. Nor
need bring proof TO bear me
sout when I say that IN this great com
bat many forces are actively enlisted 10
dispel Ignorance. to correct error. and TO
uncover and penetrate still unknown
realms. Foremost among those forces are
the great educational phalanxes made up
OF our schools, colleges and universities,
closely supported by the huge institution,
whose capstone is the modern newspaper
devoted to printing and publishing and dis
seminating information. It will be no dis
respect to the other combatants against
Ignorance. nor any disparagement Of the
excellent work which each Is doing, II l
seek to direct your attention for the mo-
ment to a few Of the more general aspects
of this forward movement OF civilization
with particular emphasis on the steps that
had to be taken before the mighty bat
teries of our modern era could be assem-
bled and brought into action.
II has been often observed that what
chiefly distinguishes man from all other
living creatures is his capacity for thought
and his power to give expression to
thought Through this incalculable adj
vantage man has been able gradually to
assert his superiority over other animals.
and to his innate faculty OF thought and
acquired faculty of communicating thought
by speech and writing and printing may
be ascribed the marvellous gains that he
has scored in the endless combat with
ignorance.
In spite of the erudition Of our most
learned explorers after truth, just when,
where, and how the beginnings of human
speech occurred, is, and will always be,
in Its very nature, a subject Of purely
speculative explanation because there were
no contemporaneous means of recording
these beginnings and handing them down
to posterity. The Biblical narrative that
ADULT man was divinely created and set
in the Garden of Eden with all of his
faculties fully developed, including the
possession of a language which was later
confused at the Tower of Babel, does not
seem. to satisfy iconoclastic scientists who
ave'persisted in advancing other theories
as more rational. One hypothesis makes
primitive man give utterance by various
to his feelings of pain, or
JOY, or hunger, and makes these interjec-
lions the basis of the first oral
cation. Another portrays our ur-ancestors
as initiating the noises of nature like the
NThistling of the wind, the c~hirplng of the
bird, the baying Of the beast. still others
have sought to study the earliest sounds
emitted by infants as likely to reflect the
expressions of the infancy of the race.
Later philosophers. while conceding some
thing to the "interjection" theory and TO
the limitation theory of speech, are dis
posed to believe that the power of thought
developed first and preceded a cropping for
means OF expression and communication;
that long and laborious trial and expert
mentation produced a linguistic root repre-
senting a particular, yet simple, concept
that was finally acqulesced in and en-
ployed as a part of speech How many
thousands of years this process .reauired
must always be mere conjecture. Whether
language and speech developed from a sim
gle source, or sprang up simultaneously
In several places, can. never be. definitely
known. 1t is known. however. and the
pact is used to sustain this so-called rad
'icaI' theory of language. that the earliest
recorded words may be classified in GER
tain groups and that within the groups
and across the groups are slmilarities of
expressions for the same concepts that
warrant belief. II not a single source. ar
least in an early interchange that exerted
a strong influence on the language roots.
III the establishment of a language had
stopped with the production of ineligible
speech humanity could never have gotten
out OF its swaddling clothes and all our
ellorts 10 tathom the workings of nature.
to teach law and morality, to inculcate re-
iigion' to extend the bounds of science,
would have been so handicapped as to re-
tard our progress to the proverbIal snaips
pace BY word Of mouth primitive man
could learn to communicate with his fell
lows but only in one another's actual
presence The thought, or idea, could be
made to span neither time nor distance
without the help of a living MESSENGER 10
transmit 1t. The art Of writing was needed
70 give permanence to spoken language
Iones' infections, gestures, could not be
reproduced in signs and inscriptions, hui
words syllables. or sentences. could he
Picture-writing undoubtedly was the EARL.
est form of such communication although
the first attempts must have been botl
crude and evanescent. Characters to ran.
resent sounds must have developed from
the characters of I Z phic composition ant
phonetic alphabets grew out of picture
writing According to William Flinder,
retfe' a series OF signs was used for com
munieatlon Ia writing around the eastern
Mediterranean from a very early date ner
- n6-nleEONINnhIn
chneiform. northumberland In mum
Der and variety and from them has bee,
selected the later alphabet. Credit 70
me grouping and selection belongs to tn,
F~hoenicians. who utilized these character
Tor commercial purposes and thus trans
united them to the Greeks. who adopte,
ana adapted them not earlier than 100
% |, nor later than 800 B. C. Througl
me greeks the alphabet was carried I
araiy' where II developed many variation.
rms Is the historic grain Of truth in tn
ureek myth about Cadmus' expedite
bringing home the alphabet from PhoenI
cia-
incidentally It is worth noting that tn
number OF letters OF the alphabet varle
in different languages. The Phoeniclal
characters were fifteen in number: tn