254 THE INTEGUMENT AND ORGANS OF 



which undoubtedly exists between the physical value of 

 musical notes produced in the larynx, and the aesthetic phase 

 of human consciousness. Behind this fact, however, lies one of 

 the most important questions in anthropology. How was primi- 

 tive speech acquired ? Did primitive man, unassisted, determine 

 in the first place what attribute of a given object should be 

 selected for its name, and thereafter employ the appropriate 

 phonetic sign for that purpose ? Did he, fully provided 

 psycho-physiologically for the development of a form of speech 

 for himself, gradually accomplish that task ? Or was he, in 

 his peculiar circumstances, supplied with advantages equivalent 

 to that early training which facilitates the acquisition of speech 

 by his successors. I shall reserve what I have to say in 

 reference to these questions for a future lecture ; at present, 

 that I may not be misunderstood, I would merely state, 



1st, That these questions involve points which cannot be 

 solved by science or history. 



2d, That in these, as in all other great questions in 

 anthropology, the conclusions to which we come, or the 

 opinions we may entertain regarding them, ought to be such 

 as have been arrived at by giving due weight to ^1 the evi- 

 dence, direct and indirect, with which we are supplied ; and 



3d, That my own opinion, regulated by such principles as 

 I have now and on a former occasion brought under your 

 notice is this — That man is fitted, by his conscious and cor- 

 poreal constitution, to develope and employ speech, but that 

 the employment of the faculty by the child demands a certain 

 amount of preliminary initiation ; and that primitive man, 

 in his peculiar circumstances, was in this, as in other essential 

 elements of his spiritual and material welfare, beneficently 

 supplied with the necessary initiation by an immediate or 

 Divine process or act. 



p. Language, when considered as a fundamental endow- 

 ment of the human economy, and at the same time in its con- 



