SOME EIGHTEENTH CENTURY EVOLUTIONISTS. 337 



minds. In order to promote intellectual conviviality among his learned 

 fellow townsmen, Monboddo introduced the innovation of late dinners 

 — for his literary suppers, we are told by one who attended them, 

 'had all the variety and abundance of a principal meal,' and were 

 modeled after the symposia of the ancients. In this society, so distin- 

 guished for scientific attainments and for original theories in natural 

 science and philosophy, Monboddo had the reputation of being one of 

 the most learned and most original. His speculations about the origin 

 of language were only less notable, as a piece of pioneering in a new 

 science, than was the work of Smith, of Hutton and of Black; and he 

 had the insight to suggest — though only in a private letter — the theory 

 of the common descent of the European tongues and Sanscrit, a lan- 

 guage then newly made known to the Occident by his correspondent, 

 Sir William Jones. But it was felt by most of Monboddo 's British 

 contemporaries that he pushed originality in theorizing to the point of 

 fantastic absurdity when he declared that civilized man is akin to the 

 orang-outang and a descendant of progenitors that lacked speech and 

 possibly had tails. The Judge's chapters on the orang-outang sent 

 learned Britain into inextinguishable laughter, and many were the 

 poor witticisms made at his expense. The most vigorous and most 

 amusing of all his critics was the great representative of a common- 

 sense conservatism, Dr. Johnson. Gibes and invectives directed against 

 the author of so ludicrous and so scandalous a doctrine are constantly 

 recurring in the pages of Boswell : " Sir, it is as possible that the 

 orang-outang does not speak, as that he speaks. However, I shall not 

 contest the point; I should have thought it impossible to find a Mon- 

 boddo; yet he exists." "It is a pity," said Johnson again, "to see 

 Lord Monboddo publish such notions as he has done; a man of sense 

 and of so much elegant learning. There would be nothing in a fool 

 doing it; we should only laugh; but when a wise man does it, we are 

 sorry. Other people have strange notions, but they conceal them; if 

 they have tails, they hide them; but Monboddo is as jealous of his 

 tail as a squirrel." But Johnson's final objection is expressed in 

 these words : ' ' Sir, it is all conjecture about a thing useless even if 

 it were known to be true. . . . Conjecture as to things useful is good ; 

 but conjecture as to what it would be useless to know, such as whether 

 man went on all four, is very idle." The intellectual history of the 

 century that followed constitutes an ironical commentary on this 

 dictum of the great eighteenth century conservative. 



Monboddo 's opinions concerning the descent of man are expressed 

 most at length in the first volume of the 'Origin and Progress of 

 Language,' published in 1773; some further hints of them may be 

 found here and there in the letters of Monboddo recently collected and 



vol. lxv. — 22. 



