208 STUDIES IN LIFE AND SENSE. 



question is to account for the first beginnings of association betwixt 

 objects and corresponding vocal sounds. In the origin of language, 

 as in many matters of later human existence, it is really le premier 

 pas qui coute. The bare consideration of usefulness and advantage 

 would be a more than sufficient reason for explaining why the habit 

 of associating objects and sounds should gain in strength and 

 persistence as time passed ; whilst, as the gregarious habits of early 

 man in turn became fixed and paramount, such habit would 

 acquire new force, and influence man's mental powers with 

 cumulative effect. If thus we may not solve the mystery which 

 surrounds even the theoretical beginnings of language, we may 

 yet sufficiently approach the environs of the subject to declare 

 with certitude that the growth of this " crowning mercy " of human 

 life has not lain outside those laws of development which alone 

 profess to lead us towards a conception of the "how" of living 

 nature in other and widely different aspects. Not only in the 

 intelligence of which language is one outcome, has man sped far 

 ahead of his Simian neighbours. The results which lower brains, 

 such as those of our canine friends, may accomplish in their way, 

 may teach us the ends to which the development of a higher and 

 more plastic mental organisation, under the benign influences of 

 an extended infancy, may lead. Mind-development, indeed, appears 

 ever to have been favoured over mere physical growth. It is in 

 virtue of this law that the gorilla and the prizefighter, excelling homo 

 sapiens of the purest type in brute strength, are nevertheless well- 

 nigh on a par when their share of this world's highest aims and 

 excellences are compared with his. Such a comparison is, perhaps, 

 after all by no means an unjust one ; inasmuch as it leads us 

 to perceive some of the more prominent qualities and powers which 

 have led man upwards to fulness of life, from the first beginnings 

 and from the dim childhood of his race. 



