56 THE DESCENT OF MAN. Part I. 



biting different districts may be appositely compared, 

 as Barrington remarks, " to provincial dialects ;" and 

 the songs of allied, though distinct species may be com- 

 pared with the languages of distinct races of man. I 

 have given the foregoing details to shew that an in- 

 stinctive tendency to acquire an art is not a peculiarity 

 confined to man. 



With respect to the origin of articulate language, 

 after having read on the one side the highly interesting 

 works of Mr. Hensleigh Wedgwood, the Kev. F. Farrar, 

 and Prof. Schleicher, 34 and the celebrated lectures of 

 Prof. Max Miiller on the other side, I cannot doubt that 

 language owes its origin to the imitation and mo- 

 dification, aided by signs and gestures, of various 

 natural sounds, the voices of other animals, and man's 

 own instinctive cries. When we treat of sexual selec- 

 tion we shall see that primeval man, or rather some 

 early progenitor of man, probably used his voice largely, 

 as does one of the gibbon-apes at the present day, in 

 producing true musical cadences, that is in singing ; 

 we may conclude from a widely -spread analogy that 

 this power would have been especially exerted during 

 the courtship of the sexes, serving to express various 

 emotions, as love, jealousy, triumph, and serving as a 

 challenge to their rivals. The imitation by articulate 

 sounds of musical cries might have given rise to 

 words expressive of various complex emotions. As 

 bearing on the subject of imitation, the strong tendency 

 in our nearest allies, the monkeys, in microcephalous 



34 ' On the Origin of Language/ by H. Wedgwood, 1866. ' Chapters 

 on Language,' by the Kev. F. W. Farrar, 1865. These works are most 

 interesting. See also ' De la Phys. et de Parole,' par Albert Lemoine, 

 1865, p. 190. The work on this subject, by the late Prof. Aug. Schlei- 

 cher, has been translated by Dr. Bikkers into English, under the title 

 of ' Darwinism tested by the Science of Language/ 1869. 



