FIFTH DAY'S .SITTING. 107 



no existing race of apes seems to have got beyond the 

 " growl " of which Mr. Darwin has spoken. 



Homo. Nor even so far as that, my Lord. No existing 

 race of apes ever had this " unusually wise " progenitor 

 to teach them to imitate the growl of a beast of prey to 

 warn their "brethren" of danger. Only the race which 

 developed into man was so favoured ! 



Lord C. What follows after this ? 



Homo. Mr. Darwin goes on, my Lord, through page after 

 page, telling us, among other things as little to the point, 

 that, " as Home Tooke observes, language is an art, like 

 brewing or baking," and not an instinct ; that " the sounds 

 uttered by birds offer in several respects the nearest analogy 

 to language," and what he " cannot doubt " as to the origin 

 of language ; that ants communicate among themselves 

 " by means of their antennae ;" that "we might have used 

 our fingers " for speech, but that the loss of our hands, 

 while thus employed, would have been a serious incon- 

 venience ; that " the fact of the higher apes not using their 

 vocal organs for speech, no doubt results from their intel- 

 ligence not being sufficiently advanced ;" that, in this 

 respect, they are like those "birds which possess organs fitted 

 for singing, though they never sing ;" and that the crow 

 has " vocal organs similarly constructed " to those of the 

 nightingale, though it uses them merely for " croaking." 

 He thus wanders from one unimportant point to another, 

 always avoiding the real point, and then winds up as 

 follows : " From these few and imperfect remarks I con- 

 clude that the extremely complex and regular construction 

 of many barbarous languages, is no proof that they owe 

 their origin to a special act of creation. Nor, as we have 

 seen, does the faculty of articulate speech, in itself, offer any 

 insuperable objection to the belief that man has been 



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