REASON AND PRIMITIVE MAN 283 



just cause to feel disappointed if we passed by this 

 sixteenth chapter entirely in silence. Therefore we will 

 very briefly refer to what appear to us to be the most 

 noteworthy portions of its contents. 



Our author first notices the hypothesis of sundry 

 German philologists, to the effect that sounds (articulate 

 and other) had first been emitted " in the way of instinc- 

 tive cries, wholly destitute of any semiotic intention," 

 which cries, " by repeated association," acquired, " as it 

 were automatically, a semiotic value." Now, as we 

 pointed out in our introductory chapter, we are far from 

 contesting that there never could have been creatures 

 more man-like than any existing ape, which creatures 

 gave forth articulate, instinctive cries, having a practical, 

 but no intentional, significance. Such creatures, how- 

 ever, obviously were not men. Nevertheless, Mr. 

 Romanes himself very rationally rejects * this German 

 hypothesis as " ignoring the whole problem which stands 

 to be solved — namely, the genesis of those powers of 

 ideation which first put a soul of meaning into the 

 previously insignificant sounds." The hypothesis is, we 

 think, none the less distinctly worthy of note, as showing 

 the absurd lengths to which theorists in difficulties 

 will go. 



Mr. Romanes, however, only rejects the theory 

 because it assumes that men began to speak without 

 having first acquired a sign-making faculty of gesture 

 sign-making. But the very same fundamental ignoratio 

 elenchi tells as much against him, as it does against the 

 hypothesis he thus criticizes. For his view really "ignores 



* p. 362. 



