2^8 MENTAL EVOLUTION IN MAN. 



CHAPTER XII. 



COMPARATIVE PHILOLOGY. 



We have now repeatedly seen that there is only one argument 

 in favour of the view that the elsewhere continuous and uni- 

 versal process of evolution — mental as well as organic — was 

 interrupted at its terminal phase, and that this argument 

 stands on the ground of psychology. But we have also seen 

 that even upon this its own ground the argument admits of 

 abundant refutation. In order the more clearly to show that 

 such is the case, I have hitherto designedly kept my discussion 

 within the limits of psychological science. The time, however, 

 has now come when I can afford to take a new point of 

 departure. It is to Language that my opponents appeal : to 

 Language they shall go. 



In previous chapters I have more than once remarked that 

 the science of historical psychology is destitute of fossils : 

 unlike pre-historic structures, pre-historic ideas leave behind 

 them no record of their existence. But now a partial excep- 

 tion must be taken to this general statement. For the new 

 science of Comparative Philology has revealed the important 

 fact that, if on the one hand speech gives ^A'pression to ideas, 

 on the other hand it receives /;//pression from them, and that 

 the impressions thus stamped are surprisingly persistent. The 

 consequence is that in philology we possess the same kind of 

 unconscious record of the growth and decay of ideas, as is 

 furnished by palaeontology of the growth and decay of 

 species. Thus viewed, language may be regarded as the 

 stratified deposit of thoughts, wherein they lie embedded 

 ready to be unearthed by the labours of the man of science. 



