88 De Vi Phystca 



this belief is not science : it is mere philo- 

 sophical absurdity. There is no potentiality 

 of language in an animal that does not 

 possess it. The faculty of speech, i.e. the 

 externality of reason and its vehicle, is one 

 of the necessary jumps of Nature, and no man 

 knows, or ever will know, when or how it 

 began. But man in his lowest form must 

 have been a rationally communicating ani- 

 mal : and before that, there were no men. 

 And this, I wish the reader to observe, is 

 not a theological, it is a logical necessity. 

 For things can develop only from potentia- 

 lities : and out of the incapacity of speaking, 

 speech can never come. 



Therefore the true evolutionary view is, not 

 that man either is, or ever was, a monkey : 

 but on the contrary, that he neither is, nor 

 ever was. The origin of speech and reason 

 cannot be scientifically explained, without 



