THE TRANSITION IN THE RACE. ^yg 



already-existing h.ibit of articulating musical notes, sup- 

 posing our progenitors to have resembled the gibbons or tin. 

 chimpanzees in this respect. But long after this first rude 

 beginning of articulate speech, the language of tone and 

 gesture would have continued as much the most important 

 machinery of communication : the half-human creature now 

 before our imagination would probably have struck us as a 

 wonderful adept at making significant sounds and move- 

 ments both as to number and variety; but in all probability 

 we should scarcely have been able to notice the already- 

 developing germ of articulation. Nor do I believe that, if 

 we were able to strike in again upon the history thousands 

 of years later, we should find that pantomime had been super- 

 seded by speech. On the contrary, I believe we should 

 find that although considerable progress had been made in 

 the former, so that the object then before us might appear 

 deserving of being classed as Homo, we should also feel that 

 he must needs still be distinguished by the addition alahts 

 Lastly, I believe that this most interesting creature probably 

 lived for an inconceivably long time before his faculty of 

 articulate sign-making had developed sufficiently far to begin 

 to starve out the more primitive and more natural systems ; 

 and I believe that, even after this starving-out process did 

 begin, another inconceivable lapse of time must have been 

 required for such progress to have eventually transformed 

 Homo alahts into Homo sapiens. 



It is now time to consider a branch of this hypothesis 

 which has been suggested by the philologist Professor Noire, 

 to which allusion has already been made in an earlier chapter.* 



Before Mr. Darwin had published his views. Professor 

 Noir^ had elaborated a theory of the origin of speech which 

 was substantially the same as that which I have already quoted 

 from the Descent of Man.-\ The only difference between 



• See pp. 288-290. 



f Welt als Entwickehmg der Geists^ s. 255. This book, however, was nol 

 published until 1874— /.<?. some years after the Descent 0/ Man. 



