THE TRANSITION IN THE RACE. 37 1 



course of our hypothetical history would be even more easy 

 to imagine than it was under the supposition previously 

 considered. For, under the present supposition, we start 

 with an already man-like creature, erect in attitude, much 

 more intelligent than any other animal, shaping flints to 

 serve as tools and weapons, living in tribes or societies, and 

 able in no small degree to communicate the logic of his 

 recepts by means of gesture-signs, facial expressions, and 

 vocal tones. Clearly, from such an origin, the subsequent 

 evolution of sign-making in the direction of articulate sounds 

 would be an even more easy matter to imagine than under 

 the previous hypothesis. For, let us try to imagine a com- 

 munity of Homo alalus, 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 (and, consequently, as natural selec- 

 tion laid a greater and greater premium on intelligent co-ope- 

 ration, as in the case of social insects),! such signs would 

 require to become more and more conventional, or acquire 

 more and more the character of sentence-words and deno- 

 tative signs.f Now, where the signs were vocal, the only 



structural hiatus between the two watches. A hair in the balance-wheel, a little 

 rust on a pinion, a bend in a tooth of the escapement, a something so slight that 

 only the practised eye of the watchmaker can discover it, may be the source of all 

 the difference. And believing, as I do, with Cuvier, that the possession of 

 articulate speech is the grand distinctive character of man (whether it be absolutely 

 peculiar to him or not), I find it very easy to comprehend, that some equally 

 inconspicuous structural difference may have been the primary cause of the 

 immeasurable and practically infinite divergence of the human from the simian 

 stirps" (Huxley, Mati's Place in Nature, p. 103). 



♦ Here I will ask the reader to bear in mind the considerations above adduced 

 from Geiger, as to the encouragement which must have been given to a semiotic 

 use of vocal sounds by habitual attention being given to the movements of the 

 mouth in significant grimace — such attention being naiurally bestowed in larger 

 measure by an intelligent ape-like creature which was accustomed to depend 

 chiefly on its sense of sight, than it would be by any of the existing quadrumana. 



f For sign-making among the social insects, see above, pp. 88-95. 



X Here, be it observed, the element of truth which belongs to the first of the 

 three hypotheses that we are considering comes in. Compare foot-note on page 



