Chap. II. MENTAL POWERS. Gl 



preservation of certain favoured words in the struggle 

 for existence is natural selection. 



The perfectly regular and wonderfully complex con- 

 struction of the languages of many barbarous nations 

 has often been advanced as a proof, either of the divine 

 origin of these languages, or of the high art and former 

 civilisation of their founders. Thus F. von Schlegel 

 writes : " In those languages which appear to be at the 

 " lowest grade of intellectual culture, we frequently ob- 

 " serve a very high and elaborate degree of art in their 

 " grammatical structure. This is especially the case with 

 " the Basque and the Lapponian, and many of the Ame- 

 " rican languages." 45 But it is assuredly an error to speak 

 of any language as an art in the sense of its having 

 been elaborately and methodically formed. Philolo- 

 gists now admit that conjugations, declensions, &c, ori- 

 ginally existed as distinct words, since joined together ; 

 and as such words express the most obvious relations 

 between objects and persons, it is not surprising that 

 they should have been used by the men of most races 

 during the earliest ages. With respect to perfection, 

 the following illustration will best shew how easily we 

 may err : a Crinoid sometimes consists of no less 

 than 150,000 pieces of shell, 40 all arranged with per- 

 fect symmetry in radiating lines ; but a naturalist does 

 not consider an animal of this kind as more perfect 

 than a bilateral one with comparatively few parts, 

 and with none of these alike, excepting on the opposite 

 sides of the body. He iustlv considers the differen- 

 tiation and specialisation of organs^ as the test of per- 

 fection. So with languages, the most symmetrical and 

 complex ought not to be ranked above irregular, abbre- 



45 Quoted by C. S. Wake, ' Chapters on Man,' 1868, p. 101. 



46 Buckland, ' Bridgewater Treatise,' p. 411. 



