278 THE ORIGIN OF HUMAN REASON 



Mr. Romanes founds his hypothesis upon Geiger's 

 assertion that " language diminishes the farther we 

 look back in such a way, that we cannot forbear con- 

 cluding it must once have had no existence at all." * 

 "Who will venture to doubt it?" Mr. Romanes asks. 

 We reply, we not only doubt it, but we deny it, and say 

 it is demonstrably absurd. All that we should be war- 

 ranted in concluding from such a fact, if it were a fact, 

 would be that language, at its origin, was in a very 

 undeveloped condition. Suppose a tribe of animals or 

 plants to have been found to have been smaller and 

 smaller in size, by a regular and unvarying degree 

 of diminution, as we proceeded downward through the 

 successive geological strata : who from that would 

 conclude that the earliest members of the group had 

 no dimensions at all? There was, we are quite sure, a 

 time when language was not, but that was the time 

 when man himself was not. 



Mr. Romanes continues,! " Should so absurd a state- 

 ment be ventured [as that speechless man might be 

 self-conscious], it would be fatal to the argument of 

 my adversaries ; for the statement would imply, either 

 that concepts may exist without names, or that self- 

 consciousness may exist without concepts." But that 

 concepts may exist without names is the very essence 

 of our contention. The anecdote of his " talking bird," 

 is next recurred to, as if there was any parity between 

 the so-called '' naming " of dogs by a parrot and the 

 "naming" of bright things "star" by a child. There 



* "Development of the Human Race," Eng. Trans., p. 22. 

 t p. 356. 



