GENERAL SUMMARY AND CONCLUDING REMARK'S. 429 



presence of danger, &c., — even if it did not go the length of 

 making denotative sounds, after the manner of talking-birds. 

 Moreover, as ]\Ir. Darwin has pointed out, there is a strong 

 probability that this simian ancestor of mankind was accus- 

 tomed to use its voice in musical cadences, " as do some of 

 the gibbon-apes at the present day ; " and this habit might 

 have laid the basis for that semiotic interruption of vocal 

 sounds in which consists the essence of articulation. 



My own theory of the matter, however, is slightly different 

 to this. For, while accepting all that goes to constitute the 

 substance of Mr. Darwin's suggestion, I think it is almost 

 certain that the faculty of articulate sign-making was a 

 product of much later evolution, so that the creature who 

 first presented this faculty must have already been more 

 human than ** ape-like." This Homo alalus stands before the 

 mind's eye as an almost brutal object, indeed ; yet still, erect 

 in attitude, shaping flints to serve as tools and weapons, living 

 in tribes or societies, and able in no small degree to com- 

 municate the logic of his recepts by means of gesture-signs, 

 facial expressions, and vocal tones. From such an origin, 

 the subsequent evolution of sign-making faculty in the 

 direction of articulate sounds would be an even more easy 

 matter to imagine than it was under the previous hypothesis. 

 Having traced the probable course of this evolution, as 

 inferred by the aid of sundry analogies ; and having dwelt 

 upon the remarkable significance in this connection of the 

 inarticulate sounds which still survive as so-called "clicks" in 

 the lowly-formed languages of Africa ; I went on to detail 

 sundry considerations which seemed to render probable the 

 prolonged existence of the imaginary being in question — 

 traced the presumable phases of his subsequent evolution, 

 and met the objection which might be raised on the score of 

 Homo alalus being Homo postulatus. 



In conclusion, however, I pointed out that whatever 

 might be the truth as touching the time when the faculty of 

 articulation arose, the course of mental evolution, after it did 

 arise, must have been the same. Without again repeating 



