228 THE ORIGIN OF HUMAN REASON. 



CHAPTER VL 



REASON AND DIVERS TONGUES. 



Having considered the infant mind, Mr. Romanes next 

 turns to the very interesting study of divers tongues 

 which various races of men speak or have spoken. He 

 initiates his twelfth chapter very confidently. After 

 asserting that he has refuted a position (our own) 

 which he has entirely misunderstood, he adds * that 

 the time has come when he "can afford to take a 

 new point of departure. It is to Language that my 

 opponents appeal : to Language they shall go." But 

 the language to which they appeal is not that mere 

 verbal predication which Mr. Romanes assumes it to be, 

 but the external expression, whether by articulate or 

 inarticulate sounds or by gesture, of internal intellectual 

 apprehension. It is the verbum mentale which is alone 

 important. 



Our author here makes an observation which is not 

 a little surprising. He tells us that " the new science of 

 Comparative Philology has revealed the important fact 

 that, if on the one hand speech gives ^;irpression to ideas, 

 on the other hand it receives ^'//^pression from them." 

 A " new science " was hardly needed to make this 



* p. 238. 



