Ohap. III. Mental Powers. 91 



words are continually cropping up ; but as there is a limit to 

 the powers of the memory, single words, like whole languages. 

 gradually become extinct. As Max Miiller 09 has well re- 

 marked : — " A struggle for life is constantly going on amongst 

 "the words and grammatical forms in each language. The 

 '•' better, the shorter, the easier forms are constantly gaining the 

 '■' upper hand, and they owe their success to their own inherent 

 " virtue." To these more important causes of the survival of 

 certain words, mere novelty and fashion may be added; for 

 there is in the mind of man a strong love for slight changes in all 

 things. The survival or preservation of certain favoured words 

 in the struggle for existence is natural selection. 



The perfectly regular and wonderfully complex construction 

 of the languages of many barbarous nations has often been 

 advanced as a proof, either of the divine origin of these lan- 

 guages, 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 observe 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.' 70 But it is assuredly an error to speak of 

 any language as an art, in the sense of its having been elabor- 

 ately and methodically formed. Philologists now admit that 

 conjugations, declensions, &c, originally 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/ 1 all arranged with perfect 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 parts alike, excepting on the opposite sides 

 of the body. He justly considers the differentiation and special- 

 isation of organs as the test of perfection. So with languages ; 

 the most symmetrical and complex ought not to be ranked above 

 irregular, abbreviated, and bastardised languages, which have 



the Rev. F. W. Farrar, in an in- 70 Quoted by C. S. Wake, ' Chap- 



terestitig article, entitled ' Philo- ters on Man,' 1868, p. 101. 

 .ogy and Darwinism' in 'Nature,' n Buckland, 'Bridgewater Trea« 



March 24th, 1870, p. 528. Use.' p. 411. 

 « 9 'Nature,' Jan. 6th, 1870, p. 257. 



