32 Darwin, and after Darwin. 



the eighteenth), or, again, of a number of wholly unre- 

 lated lines, circles, &c. (as certain speculative writers of 

 the present century have imagined). But, on the other 

 hand, if all species were separately and independently 

 created, it becomes virtually incredible that we should 

 everywhere observe this progressive arborescence of 

 characters common to larger groups into more and 

 more numerous, and more and more delicate, ramifi- 

 cations of characters distinctive only of smaller and 

 smaller groups. A man would be deemed insane if he 

 were to attribute the origin of every branch and every 

 twig of a real tree to a separate act of special creation ; 

 and although we have not been able to witness the 

 growth of what we may term in a new sense the Tree 

 of Life, the structural relations which are now apparent 

 between its innumerable ramifications bear quite as 

 strong a testimony to the fact of their having been 

 due to an organic growth, as is the testimony furnished 

 by the branches of an actual tree. 



Or, to take another illustration. Classification of 

 organic forms, as Darwin, Lyell, and Hackel have 

 pointed out, strongly resembles the classification of 

 languages. In the case of languages, as in the case 

 of species, we have genetic affinities strongly marked ; 

 so that it is possible to some extent to construct a 

 Language-tree, the branches of which shall indicate, 

 in a diagrammatic form, the progressive divergence of a 

 large group of languages from a common stock. For 

 instance, Latin may be regarded as a fossil language, 

 which has given rise to a group of living languages 

 Italian, Spanish, French, and, to a large extent, 

 English. Now what would be thought of a philologist 

 who should maintain that English; French, Spanish. 



