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sympathetic consideration. It is a conception far removed from Sir 
John Lubbock’s description of the brutish, sensual, thieving savaze. 
Surely more is here involved than the mere grammatical distinction 
between the abstract and the abstracting savage. There are two sides 
to the same question. But the primitive speech of mankind was 
necessarily far more rudimentary than the rudest dialect spoken by the 
lowest savage. Dr. Brinton states that “the language of paleolithic 
man had no grammatical form. So fluctuating were its phonetics, and 
so much depended on gesture, tone, and stress, that its words could not 
have been reduced to writing, nor arranged in alphabetical sequence ; 
it possessed no prepositions, nor conjunctions, no numerals, no pro- 
nouns of any kind, no forms to express singular or plural, male or 
female, past nor present, the different vowel-sounds and the different 
consonantal groups conveyed specific significance, and were of more 
import than the syllables which they formed. The concept of time came 
much later than that of space, and for a long while was absent.” 
The postponed discussion of this part of Miss Crane’s paper took 
place at a special meeting on March 27th, when the President (Mr. 
J. E. Haselwood), Mr. E. A. Pankhurst, Mr. Petitfourt, Rev. H. G- 
Day, and others, took part in an interesting debate, lasting two 
hours. 
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 10th, 1889. 
THE ORIGIN OF SPEECH AND DEVELOPMENT OF 
LANGUAGE 
(SECOND PART.) 
Miss AGNES CRANE. 
It is evident that the primitive language of mankind was 
necessarily of a very simple character. Variable in sound, shifting and 
vague of sense, the associated tone, stress, and gesture acted as a 
supplementary determinant in what might, perhaps, be called the 
invertebrate and protean conditions. The grammatical categories, the 
chief conserving element in the construction of language, were for a 
long time absent, and they have not yet been fully developed in many 
dialects of modern savages in various stages of culture in all parts of 
the world. Some of the effects of custom on language in its primitive 
conditions are somewhat remarkable, for words are changed, lost, or 
replaced by others with extreme rapidity. It has been computed that 
tribal dialects vary with every third generation, and missionaries have 
often found carefully compiled vocabularies useless after the lapse of 
ten or twelve years in the same region. The names of the five principal 
numerals have been changed in Tahiti since the days of Captain Cook. 
Such verbal variations frequently result from observance of a singular 
custom. Whenever the name of a person is identical with that of an 
object, or closely resembles it, and the individual dies, the name of the 
object is immediately dropped out of the language and a new one 
EE 
