286 THE ORIGIN OF HUMAN REASON 



His own (the third) hypothesis is substantially like 

 Darwin's, save that he imagines the spontaneous evolu- 

 tion not of significant sounds, but of significant gestures, 

 which subsequently serve to guide and develop sub- 

 sequently arising vocal sounds, articulate and in- 

 articulate. 



*' Let us try to imagine," he says,* a community of 

 beings " considerably more intelligent than the existing 

 anthropoid apes, although still considerably below the 

 intellectual level of existing savages. It is certain [!] 

 that in such a community natural signs of voice, 

 gesture, and grimace, would be in vogue to a greater 

 or less extent. As their numbers increased . . . such 

 signs would [through natural selection] require to 

 become more and more conventional, or acquire more 

 and more the character of sentence-words." Here, 

 indeed, we have the intellect slipped in surreptitiously. 

 •' The first articulation," he subsequently tells us,t 

 " probably consisted in nothing further than a semiotic 

 breaking of vocal tones, in a manner resembling that 

 which still occurs in the so-called ' chattering ' of 

 monkeys. . . . The great difference would be that . . . 

 it must have partaken less of the nature of cries, and 

 more of the nature of names." " More ! " But things 

 are " names " or " not-names " ; there can be no " more " 

 or " less " in the matter. It is by such gross philo- 

 sophical mistakes and consequent verbal slovenliness 

 that we have " intellect " unwarrantably introduced 

 where it has no legitimate place. 



A great deal is said about the " clicks " of Hot- 



* p. 371. t p. 372. 



