62 THE DESCENT OF MAN. Part I. 



viated, and bastardised languages, which have borrowed 

 expressive words and useful forms of construction from 

 various conquering, or conquered, or immigrant races. 



From these few and imperfect remarks I conclude 

 that the extremely complex and regular construction of 

 many barbarous languages, is no proof that they owe 

 their origin to a special act of creation. 47 Nor, as 

 we have seen, does the faculty of articulate speech in 

 itself offer any insuperable objection to the belief that 

 man has been developed from some lower form. 



Self -consciousness, Individuality, Abstraction, General 

 Ideas, &c. — It would be useless to attempt discussing 

 these high faculties, which, according to several recent 

 writers, make the sole and complete distinction between 

 man and the brutes, for hardly two authors agree in their 

 definitions. Such faculties could not have been fully 

 developed in man until his mental powers had advanced 

 to a high standard, and this implies the use of a perfect 

 language. No one supposes that one of the lower ani- 

 mals reflects whence he comes or whither he goes, — 

 what is death or what is life, and so forth. But can 

 we feel sure that an old dog with an excellent memory 

 and some power of imagination, as shewn by his 

 dreams, never reflects on his past pleasures in the 

 chase ? and this would be a form of self-consciousness. 

 On the other hand, as Biiehner 48 has remarked, how 

 little can the hard-worked wife of a degraded Australian 

 savage, who uses hardly any abstract words and cannot 

 count above four, exert her self-consciousness, or reflect 

 on the nature of her own existence. 



47 See some good remarks on the simplification of languages, by Sir 

 J. Lubbock, ' Origin of Civilisation,' 1870, p. 278. 



48 ' Conferences sur la The'orie Darwinienne,' French translat., 1869, 

 p. 132. 



