Essays on Life 



loss of dignity we may incur through being 

 proved to be of humble origin, is compensated 

 by the credit we may claim for having ad- 

 vanced ourselves to such a high pitch of 

 civilisation; this bids us expect still further 

 progress, and glorifies our descendants more 

 than it abases our ancestors. But to whichever 

 view we may incline on sentimental grounds 

 the fact remains that, while Charles Darwin 

 declared language to form no impassable 

 barrier between man and the lower animals, 

 Professor Max Miiller calls it the Rubicon 

 which no brute dare cross, and deduces hence 

 the conclusion that man cannot have descended 

 from an unknown but certainly speechless ape. 

 It may perhaps be expected that I should 

 begin a lecture on the relations between 

 thought and language with some definition of 

 both these things; but thought, as Sir William 

 Grove said of motion, is a phenomenon " so 

 obvious to simple apprehension, that to define 

 it would make it more obscure." l Definitions 

 are useful where things are new to us, but 

 they are superfluous about those that are 



1 " Correlation of Forces " : Longmans, 1874, p, 15. 



