
THE ORIGIN OF THOUGHT AND SPEECH
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER I HYPOTHESES
CHAPTER II OUR ARYAN ANCESTORS
CHAPTER III THE PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE
CHAPTER IV ANIMALS
CHAPTER V PRIMITIVE HUMANITY
CHAPTER VI ANCIENT LANGUAGE
CHAPTER VII MYTHS
CHAPTER VIII BETWEEN SLEEPING AND WAKING
In the quiet moments of waking, the author confesses a restless mind tangled in half‑formed ideas and a lingering drowsiness that seems to dull human thought. He questions why most people glide through life without probing the mystery of their own existence, and he resolves to break the habit of scattered attention. This personal struggle forms a vivid entry point into a broader investigation of how thinking and speech first emerged.
The work then weaves together philosophy, early psychology and the science of language, drawing on thinkers such as Max Müller, Charles Darwin and L. Noiré. It examines the relationship between perception, will and the structures that allow words to become thought, showing how our inner dialogue shapes the world we describe. Listeners are invited to follow a careful, restless inquiry that illuminates the roots of consciousness without sacrificing the ordinary wonder of everyday reflection.
Language
en
Duration
~9 hours (555K characters)
Publisher of text edition
Project Gutenberg
Credits
Turgut Dincer, Craig Kirkwood, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive.)
Release date
2021-03-15
Rights
Public domain in the USA.
Best known today for a single early-20th-century work, this elusive writer explored one of the biggest questions in human history: how thought and language began. The result is a wide-ranging, reflective study that brings together philosophy, religion, and the history of language.
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