230 THE ORIGIN OF HUMAN REASON. 



light of history is able to guide us, there can be no 

 doubt that the principles of evolution have determined 

 the gradual development of languages, in a manner 

 strictly analogous to that in which they have determined 

 the ever-increasing refinement and complexity of social 

 organization. Now, in the latter case we saw that 

 such direct evidence of evolution from lower to higher 

 levels of culture, renders it well-nigh certain that the 

 method must have extended backwards beyond the 

 historical period ; and hence, that such direct evidence 

 of evolution uniformly pervading the historical period, 

 in itself furnishes a strong prima facie presumption that 

 this period was itself reached by means of a similarly 

 gradual development of human faculty. And thus, 

 also, it is in the case of language. If philology is able 

 to prove the fact of evolution in all known languages as 

 far back as the primitive roots out of which they have 

 severally grown, the presumption becomes exceedingly 

 strong that these earliest and simplest elements, like 

 their later and more complex products, were the result 

 of a natural growth." 



There is, of course, a parallelism between the course 

 of human speech and human intellectual conditions 

 generally, because the former is the explicit expression 

 of the latter. But since, as Mr. Ilomanes most truly 

 says, we have no evidence (beyond inferential evidence) 

 as to the actual origin of man or of speech, it by no 

 means follows either that they arose by evolution, or 

 that their earliest condition was inferior to that of which 

 we have the earliest indication. We have as much 

 evidence of decay and retrogression as of progression, 



