REASON AND DIVERS TONGUES. 2t,i 



and even Mr. Herbert Spencer considers that all existing 

 savages are degraded beings. It is hardly less im- 

 probable that primitive man was like one of the more 

 degraded existing savages, than that he was what we 

 should call highly civilized. 



We are convinced we have certain evidence that 

 man differs from every brute by a difference of kind, 

 and if his nature is essentially different, his origin must 

 also have been different, and there is an a priori 

 probability that the difference as to the mode of his 

 origin must run parallel with the difference of his nature. 

 It may be that the earliest men in whose minds 

 spontaneously arose the intellectual conceptions evolved 

 by the aspects of nature, had clearer intuitions as to 

 the real nature of things, and of the relations between 

 them, than had later men, whose minds had become 

 burthened with a multitude of conflicting impressions 

 and opinions. That such is the case seems probable 

 when we compare the clear, simple, yet profound con- 

 ceptions of the Greek intellect, as exemplified by 

 Aristotle, with the relatively obscure, involved, yet un- 

 satisfactory philosophic speculations of our own day. 



Mr. Romanes describes,* in an interesting manner, 

 the Isolating, Polysynthetic, Agglutinative, Inflectional, 

 and Analytic forms of language, and puts before us 

 views as to their relative antiquity and inter-relations. 

 He adopts Dr. Hales's suggestion t that new languages 

 may have independently arisen from children who 

 were isolated having accidentally lost their parents, and 

 he supports his view by the assertion that languages 

 * p. 250. t p. 260. 



