366 MENTAL EVOLUTION IX MAX. 



There is another prch'minary consideration which I think 

 is well worth mentioning. The philologist Geiger is led by 

 his study of language to entertain, and somewhat elaborately 

 to sustain, the following doctrine. First he points out that 

 man, much more than any other animal, uses the sense of 

 sight for the purposes of perceptual life. By this he does not 

 mean that man possesses a keener vision than any other 

 animal, but merely that of all his special senses that of sight 

 is most habitually used for taking cognizance of the external 

 world. And this, I think, must certainly be admitted. Even 

 a hitherto speechless infant may be seen to observe objects at 

 great distances, carefully to investigate objects which it holds 

 in its hands, and generally to employ its eyes much more effec- 

 tively than any of the lower animals at a comparable stage 

 of development. Now, from this relative superiority cf the 

 sense of sight in man, Geiger argues that before the origin of 

 articulate speech he, more than any other animal, must have 

 been accustomed to communicate with his fellows by means 

 of signs which appealed to that sense— z>. by gesture and 

 grimace. But, if this be admitted, it follows that from the 

 time when a particular species of the order Primates began 

 to use its eyesight more than the allied species, a condition 

 was given favourable to the subsequent and gradual de- 

 velopment of a gesticulating form of ape-like creature. Here 

 grimace also would have played an important part, and where 

 attention was particularly directed towards movements of the 

 mouth for semiotic purposes, articulate sounds would begin to 

 acquire more or less conventional significations. In this way 

 Geiger supposes that the conditions required for the origin of 

 articulate signs were laid down ; and, in view of all that he 

 says, it certainly is suggestive that the animal which relies 

 most upon the sense of sight is also the animal which has 



of "nursery-language," or "baby-talk," as a guide to the probable stages of 

 language-growth in primitive man. Without going into the arguments upon 

 this question on either side, it appears to me that the analogy as above limited 

 cannot be objected to even by the most extreme sceptics upon the philological 

 value of infantile utterance. And it is only to this extent that I anywhere use the 

 analogy. 



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