LANGUAGE AND MIND. 305 



gradually became human, while with language, the work 

 of many years, reason made its appearance. 



As early as 185 1, when the doctrine of Descent was 

 still unheard of, Steinthal *^ says : " As language arises, 

 mind originates." Ten years after Darwin, Geiger 

 writes: "Language created reason; before language, man 

 was irrational." To him, and to all who have abandoned 

 the standpoint of mysticism, "man is a genus springing 

 from an animal condition by means of the origin and 

 unfolding of his idiosyncrasy. And this conclusion is not, 

 as orthodoxy and reaction are anxious to impress upon 

 the multitude, borrowed from Darwinism, but deduced 

 from linguistic inquiry in its own way, only by a scientific 

 method. It need only be indicated that, as Geiger has 

 historically proved in so many instances, "slow develop- 

 ment, the emergence of contrast from imperceptible 

 deviations, is the cause that the same word acquires 

 various meanings ;" that the creation of language there- 

 fore rests upon this process, and nowhere makes its ap- 

 pearance suddenly and abruptly ; that the so-called laws 

 of sound are habits of sound ; that the special meaning 

 which a sound has acquired in lapse of time is always the 

 result of mere chance, or, in other words, of development. 



This deduction of linguistic inquiry most fully con- 

 firms the result of natural inquiry. And any one Vv'ho 

 takes the trouble to follow the course of linguistic science 

 will be convinced that its champions, except, perhaps, 

 Bleek, Schleicher, and Friedrich Miiller, are labouring 

 rather to discredit, than to acknowledge, the influence of 

 the doctrine of Descent. All the higher is our estimate 

 of it, and therewith the most powerful objection to the in- 

 clusion of man in the great law of derivation is set aside. 



