128 PROCEEDINGS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. 



or quality of its brain occurs from first to last. When " speaking: 

 man " ap|)eared as a new species on the world's stage, the size and 

 power of his brain was fixed, once for all. There are variations in 

 diff"erent races, as there are difi'erences in this respect among children 

 of the sauic parents ; but the variations do not pass certain defined 

 limits, and are constantly tending, as Mr. Galton has shown of the- 

 human stature, towards the general average. 



Thus it becomes apparent that in the case of man, or at least of 

 speaking man — for if there was a speechless homo primigenius, he 

 belonged to another species — the process of evolution, or, more 

 properly speaking, of development, applies, not to his natural capa- 

 city, but to his growth in knowledge. Just as his bodily stature and 

 stj-ength have remained the same from the earliest times and in all 

 stages of culture — as his osseous remains and the measurements of 

 existing races clearly show — so there can be no reasonable doubt that 

 his mental stature and force have remained unaltered. We have no 

 reason to doubt — we have every reason to believe — that the earliest 

 Aryans, savages as the}^ undoubtedly wei-e, could reason as profoundly 

 and feel as keenly as the most cultivated of their descendants. As 

 the structure of language depends entirely on the natural capacity of 

 its earliest framers, it is clear that the Aryan tongue, in its primitive 

 form, must have possessed every quality and every power of expression 

 which have ever belonged to it. If, among other barbarians, there 

 have been tribes equal in natural capacity to the barbarous Aryans, 

 their languages will equally show these eminent qualities. 



To apply these j)ropositions, — if the language of the latest Aiyan& 

 possesses and constantly exercises the power of expressing abstract 

 ideas, we may be certain that this power was possessed and constantly 

 exercised by the first Aryan family. And farther, among the barbar- 

 ous tribes of the present day, we may expect to find the same power 

 possessed and exercised, with greater or less fulness, in proportion, not 

 to their degree of cultivation, but to their natural capacity. We 

 should expect that highly endowed communities of barbarians, like 

 the Algonkins and Iroquois, would have languages abounding in ab- 

 stract and general expressions. Such, in fact, we find to be the case. 

 If we take wh-at Professor Max Miiller styles abstract terms of the 

 second degree — the most elaborate if not the most metaphysical of all 



