THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE. 187 



one of Nature's great transitions, such as have been 

 called ' expression-points ' of progress." A slight rise 

 in intelligence might lead to the first acquisition of 

 Speech, and from this point the rise might be at once 

 exceedingly swift and in directions wholly new. The 

 illustration is not to be taken for more than it seeks 

 to illustrate — which is not the method of transition as 

 to qualitative detail, but simply the fact that an ap- 

 parently slight change may have startling and indefi- 

 nite results. 



The last difficulty is this. If the connection be- 

 tween Mind and Language is so vital, why do not 

 Birds, many of which apparently speak, emulate Man 

 in mental power? If his speech is largely responsible 

 for his intelligence, why have not Birds — the parrot, 

 for instance — attained the same intelligence? Several 

 answers might be suggested to the question, and sev- 

 eral kinds of answers — biological, physiological, philo- 

 logical, and psychological. But the real answer is the 

 general one, that to make animals human required 

 a conspiracy of circumstances which neither Birds nor 

 any other animal fell heir to. It was one chance in a 

 million that the multitude of co-operating conditions 

 which pushed Man onward were fulfilled ; and though 

 it may never be known what these conditions were, it 

 was doubtless from the failure on the one hand to 

 meet one or more of them, and on the other from the 

 success with which openings in other directions were 

 pursued by competing species, that Man was left alone 

 during the later seons of his ascent. 



The progenitors of Birds and the progenitors of 

 Man at a very remote period were probably one. But 

 at a certain point they parted company and diverged 



