XL] MY NEW IDEAS 389 



that every motion of the jaws, lips, and tongue, together with 

 inward or outward breathing, and especially the mute or 

 liquid consonants ending words which serve to indicate abrupt 

 or continuous motion, have corresponding meanings in so 

 many cases as to show a fundamental connection. I thus 

 enormously extend the principle of onomatopoeias in the 

 origin of vocal language. As I have been unable to find any 

 reference to this important factor in the origin of language, 

 and as no competent writer has pointed out any fallacy in it, 

 I think I am justified in supposing it to be new and important. 

 Mr. Gladstone informed me that there were many thousands 

 of illustrations of my ideas in Homer. 



10. In 1890 I published in the Fortnightly Review an 

 article on "Human Selection," and in 1892 (in the Boston 

 Arena) one on " Human Progress, Past and Future." These 

 deal with different aspects of the same great problem — the 

 gradual improvement of the race by natural process ; and 

 they were also written partly for the purpose of opposing the 

 various artificial processes of selection advocated by several 

 English and American writers. I showed that the only 

 method of advance for us, as for the lower animals, is in 

 some form of natural selection, and that the only mode of 

 natural selection that can act alike on physical, mental, and 

 moral qualities will come into play under a social system 

 which gives equal opportunities of culture, training, leisure, 

 and happiness to every individual. This extension of the 

 principle of natural selection as it acts in the animal world 

 generally is, I believe, quite new, and is by far the most 

 important of the new ideas I have given to the world. 



A short summary of these papers appears in my thirty- 

 third chapter ; but every one interested in the deepest 

 social problems should read the articles themselves (in my 

 " Studies " ), which give a very condensed statement of the 

 whole argument. 



1 1. In an article on "The Glacial Erosion of Lake Basins " 

 (in the Fortnightly Review, December, 1893), I brought 



