Dr. Bateman on Darwinism. 45 



preted psychologically is the inventive turn of 

 mind which could establish an association be- 

 tween a number of vocal sounds and a corre- 

 sponding number of objects, and which could 

 appreciate the utility of such an association in 

 facilitating concerted action with one's fellow- 

 creatures ; though, as to the last point, the utility 

 would be so enormous that the maintenance of 

 the device, when once conceived, could never be 

 in doubt. In the origination of language it is 

 but the first costly step that requires considera- 

 tion ; but this step obviously involved no super- 

 human mystery. It was but an instance though 

 the greatest of all in its consequences of that 

 general psychical plasticity which characterizes 

 the only animal which begins life with a consid- 

 erable proportion of its nervous combinations un- 

 determined. 



It is not pretended that such considerations 

 solve the problem of the origin of speech. They 

 nevertheless go far toward putting it into its 

 proper position, and indicating the class of in- 

 quiries with which it must be grouped if it is to 

 be treated in that broad philosophical way which 

 can alone connect its solution with the fortunes 

 of the Darwinian theory. The existence of lan- 

 guage is not, as Max Mailer's dicta imply, a fact 



