526 Evolution and Language 



d' India still survives, while in German the name Truthahn seems to 

 be derived onomatopoetically from the bird's cry, though a dialectic 

 Calecutischer Hahn specifies erroneously an origin for the bird from 

 the Indian Calicut. In the Spanish pavo, on the other hand, there is a 

 curious confusion vrith the peacock. Thus in these names for objects 

 of common knowledge, the introduction of which into Europe can be 

 dated with tolerable definiteness, we see evinced the methods by 

 which in remoter ages objects were named. The words were borrowed 

 fi'om the community whence came the new object, or the real or 

 fancied resemblance to some kno^vn object gave the name, or again 

 popular etymology might convert the unknown term into something 

 that at least approached in sound a well-known word. 



The Origin of Species had not long been published when the 

 parallelism of development in natural species and in languages struck 

 investigators. At the time, one of the foremost German philologists 

 was August Schleicher, Professor at Jena. He was himself keenly 

 interested in the natural sciences, and amongst his colleagues was 

 Ernst Haeckel, the protagonist in Germany of the Darwinian theory. 

 How the new ideas struck Schleicher may be seen from the following 

 sentences by his colleague Haeckel. " Speech is a physiological function 

 of the human organism, and has been developed simultaneously with 

 its organs, the larynx and tongue, and with the functions of the brain. 

 Hence it will be quite natural to find in the evolution and classifica- 

 tion of languages the same features as in the evolution and classifica- 

 tion of organic species. The various groups of languages that are 

 distinguished in philology as primitive, fundamental, parent, and 

 daughter languages, dialects, etc., correspond entirely in their de- 

 velopment to the different categories which we classify in zoology 

 and botany as stems, classes, orders, families, genera, species and 

 varieties. The relation of these groups, partly coordinate and partly 

 subordinate, in the general scheme is just the same in both cases; 

 and the evolution follows the same lines in both\" These views were 

 set forth in an open letter addressed to Haeckel in 1863 by Schleicher 

 entitled, *' The Darwinian theory and the science of language." Un- 

 fortunately Schleicher's views went a good deal farther than is 



1 Haeckel, The Evolution of Man, p. 485, London, 1905. This represents Schleicher's 

 own words: Was die Naturforscher als Gattung bezeichnen wiirden, heisst bei den 

 Glottikern Sprachstamm, auch Sprachsippe; niiher verwandte Gattungen bezeichnen sie 

 wohl auch als Sprachfamilien einer Sippe oder eines Sprachstammes....Die Arten einer 

 Gattung nennen wir Sprachen eines Stammes; die Uuterarten einer Art sind bei una die 

 Dialekte oder Mundarten einer Sprache; den Varietiiteu und Spielarten entsprechen die 

 Untermundarten oder Nebenmundarten und eudlich den einzelnen Individuen die 

 Sprechweise der einzelnen die Sprachen redenden Menschen. Die Darwinache Theorie 

 und die Spracliwissenschaft, Weimar, 1863, p. 12 f. Darwin makes a more cautious 

 statement about the classitication of languages in The Origin of Species, p. 578 (Popular 

 Edition, 1900). 



