SKETCH OF CLEMEN CE ROYER. 695 



Further on, Madame Royer discusses the anatomical relations of 

 man and the ape, with the conclusion deduced as resulting from 

 phenomena of observation that the human family is only a term in 

 a series of which the different primates are the other steps. In short, 

 the further we go back in the past of primitive man, the more we 

 meet manifestations of passions as ferocious as base. This is, more- 

 over, easily conceivable. The savage, at war with Nature and his 

 like, and placed in conditions of life common to the animal world, 

 has in the beginning all its bad instincts. 



The end of the second part of UOrigine de V Homme et des So- 

 cietes is devoted to the most complex problem of anthropology — that 

 of the beginning of speech and the origin of language. Man, in the 

 view of the author, first makes his wants and feelings known to other 

 beings by a series of signs. The three primordial faculties — feeling, 

 thinking, and wishing — were the point of departure, the cause and 

 the rule of all languages that man has created in his entire progress. 

 As his mind has shaped a new idea, it has found a new sign to express 

 it; but the process varying with the race, time and the environment 

 have produced the diversity of tongues which we observe. In the 

 beginning a more or less complicated cry suffices to express the 

 thought in its original syncretism. Then, under the influence of 

 reflection continued through ages, from generation to generation, it 

 becomes transformed and decomposed into various elements. Every 

 noun was primarily an adjective-substantive. For example, thunder 

 was designated by imitating it; the horse, by its neighing and the 

 sound of galloping. The relations of place, possession, and those of 

 many other kinds were probably expressed by the look, the attitude, 

 a motion with the hand, etc. Ideas of number were developed 

 slowly. The earliest languages contained only about a hundred 

 words, and these sufficed for centuries for the needs of human 

 thought, confined within the narrow experience of a generation. It 

 results from these facts that in every sense the formation of lan- 

 guages is a consequence of social relations. But here rises a question 

 as important as difficult to answer: When did man begin to speak? 

 From the harmony between the anthropological classifications de- 

 duced from philological research and those drawn from the labors 

 of the physiologists it appears evident that the spontaneous and primi- 

 tive constitution of the first elements of language was, among all 

 known human races, posterior to their geographical and ethnical 

 separation. In other words, local varieties had already been formed, 

 and men had acquired the anatomical differences that distinguish 

 them to-day before they conquered the faculty of speech. However 

 it may be with these hypotheses, we may assent fully to the conclu- 

 sion of the chapter that man will never deserve the name of the reason- 



