THE DAWN OF MIND. 149 



of battle and the chase. No words entered at that 

 time into human speech except those relating to the 

 activities, few and monotonous, of an almost animal 

 lot. These were the days of the protoplasm of speech. 

 There was no differentiation between verbs or ad- 

 verbs, nouns or adjectives. The sentence as yet was 

 not ; each word was a sentence. There was no gram- 

 matical inflection but the inflection of the voice ; the 

 moods of the verb were uttered by intonation or 

 grimace. The pronouns " him " and " you " were 

 made by pointing at him and you. Man had even 

 no word for himself, for he had not yet discovered 

 himself. This fact, when duly considered, raises the 

 witness of Language to the Ascent of Mind to an 

 almost unique importance. Nothing more significant 

 could be said as to Man's mental past than that 

 there was a time when he was scarcely conscious 

 of himself, as a self. He knew himself, not as subject, 

 but like a little child, as one of the objects of the 

 external world. The words might have been written 

 historically of mankind, " When I was a child, I 

 spake as a child." 



This evidence will meet us again in other forms 

 when we pass to consider the Evolution of Language 

 itself. Meantime let us close this chapter by point- 

 ing out a relation of a much more significant order 

 between Language and the whole subject of Mental 

 Evolution. For the point is not only of special in- 

 terest but it touches upon, and helps to solve, one of 

 the vital problems of the Ascent of Man. 



The enormous distance travelled by the Mind of 

 Man beyond the utmost limit of intelligence reached 

 by any animal is a puzzling circumstance, a circum- 



