has by the force of imitation already acquired this power of speech. That is why you don't devote a moment's thought to the magnitude of this discovery by our earliest ancestors. Imagine for a moment that there was no power of speech We won't meet here to-day; there will be no meetings; there will be no schools; there will be no state. We would all still be wandering in the undeveloped forests undergoing tremendous tension by our inability to transmit the thought accumulated in our Mind and perhaps experimenting to discover some method for its transmission. The invention of speech-articulate speech-is the first major invention of the humans made perhaps millions of years ago.
Once speech was invented the human very soon realised how inadequate it was. Through your voice you can transmit your thought only to a handful of people found within a few yards of yourself. But that was not satisfactory. Thought should be transmitted, the ancient humans felt, to persons living at far off distances - The voice of a father at Madras could not reach the ears of his son at Benares. This was a distressing situation. As a first solution of this difficulty the father attempted to transmit his thought to a mercenary and made him go all the way to Benares and retransmit his thought to his son. Imagine what a laborious and costly process this should have been. Nay it was worse, for we do not know how much the carrier would have transferred and mutilated the thought when it was in his possession.
I am sure you remember the story of a fellow who went to a neighbouring village to attend a feast. For the first time in his life he tasted in that feast a peculiar sweet. He liked it so much that he resolved that he should ask his wife to prepare it for him when he went back to his home. He learnt from his host that the name of the sweet was 'Modaka'. He wanted to transmit his thought to his wife in the next village. So he carried his thought. Lest he should forget he went on repeating 'Modaka', 'Modaka'. Half way between the two villages there was a little rut. While jumping across the rut he instinctively uttered the nonsensical phrase 'atrimak' which the situation automatically created. There-after his lips went on repeating 'atrimak'. He reached home; he asked his wife to prepare 'atrimak'; She could not for the simple reason that she had never heard of a sweet called 'atrimak'. Next morning his grannie living in the next house came and asked the fellow "Why did you beat your wife so severely?" He replied "She refused to make a cake for me". The old lady chastised him
