THOUGHT AND LANGUAGE 1 



THREE well-known writers, Professor Max 

 Miiller, Professor Mivart, and Mr. Alfred 

 Russel Wallace have lately maintained that 

 though the theory of descent with modification 

 accounts for the development of all vegetable 

 life, and of all animals lower than man, yet 

 that man cannot not at least in respect of 

 the whole of his nature be held to have 

 descended from any animal lower than him- 

 self, inasmuch as none lower than man pos- 

 sesses even the germs of language. Reason, it 

 is contended more especially by Professor 

 Max Miiller in his " Science of Thought," to 

 which I propose confining our attention this 

 evening is so inseparably connected with 

 language, that the two are in point of fact 

 identical ; hence it is argued that, as the lower 

 animals have no germs of language, they can 



1 A lecture delivered at the Working Men's College in Great 

 Ormond Street, March 15, 1890 ; rewritten and delivered again 

 at the Somerville Club, February 13, 1894. 



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