Dr. Bateman on Darwinism. 48 



iological, by which the faculty of articulate 

 speech was acquired by mankind, no thorough 

 explanation has yet been offered, either upon the 

 Darwinian or upon any other theory. The so- 

 called "bow-wow " or onomatopoetic theory is no 

 doubt correct, so far as it goes, as a description 

 of facts which have attended the acquisition of 

 speech ; but it hardly goes to the root of the mat- 

 ter. The power of enunciating sounds so as to 

 communicate ideas and feelings is certainly an art, 

 as much as the later acquired powers of writing 

 or drawing. For the original acquisition of such 

 an art two conditions were requisite the phys- 

 iological capacity of the vocal organs for produc- 

 ing articulate sounds, and the psychological ca- 

 pacity of abstraction implied in the conception of 

 a sign or symbol. There must also have been re- 

 quired as underlying the last-named capacity 

 the possession of a certain amount of mental 

 flexibility, or inventiveness, or capability of fram- 

 ing new combinations of ideas. This sort of men- 

 tal flexibility is found among animals in man 

 alone, and in his case it is the accompaniment, 

 and probably the result, of an exceptionally long 

 period of infancy. The significance of infancy, 

 psychologically, is that it is a period during which 

 a great number of all-important nervous combina- 



