130 THE NEANDERTHAL SKULL. 



this obviously depends on the develop- 

 ment of the mental faculties."* 



Notwithstanding this frank admission 

 respecting one of the many great gulfs 

 between man and monkey on the subject 

 of language, Darwin seems so scared with 

 the idea that it may tend to subvert his 

 idolised theory, that though he gives 

 several pages to the subject generally, he 

 carefully omits all consideration of the one 

 crucial point viz., the peculiarity which 

 he owns distinguishes man from other 

 animals " his large power of connect- 

 ing definite sounds with definite ideas." 

 Hence he contents himself with one of his 

 usual probabilities " Some early proge- 

 nitor of man may probably have used his 

 voice largely, as does one of the gibbon- 

 apes of the present day in producing 

 musical cadences" adding that " mon- 



* Descent of Man, i., p. 54. It was a fine saying 

 of the celebrated Humboldt, that "Man is man only 

 by means of speech, but that in order to invent speech, 

 he must be man already." Quoted by Sir Charles 

 Lyell in his Antiquity of Man, p. 468. 



