152 THE DAWN OF MIND. 



To use language is to make thinking easy. Hence 

 the release of brain energy for further developments 

 in new directions. In these and other ways speech 

 became the main factor in the intellectual develop- 

 ment of mankind. Language formed the trellis on 

 which Mind climbed upward, which continuously sus- 

 tained the ripening fruits of knowledge for later 

 minds to pluck. Before the savage's son was ten 

 years old he knew all that his father knew. The 

 ways of the game, the habits of birds and fish, the 

 construction of traps and snares all these would be 

 taught him. The physical world, the changes of 

 season, the location of hostile tribes, the strategies of 

 war, all the details and interests of savage life would 

 be explained. And before the boy was in his teens he 

 was equipped for the Struggle for Life as his fore- 

 fathers had never been even in old age. The son, in 

 short, started to evolve where his father left off. Try 

 to realize what it would be for each of us to begin life 

 afresh, to be able to learn nothing by the experiences 

 of others, to live in a dumb and illiterate world, and 

 see what chance the animal had of making pro- 

 nounced progress until the acquisition of speech. It 

 is not too much to say that speech, if mental evolution 

 is to come to anything or is to be worth anything, is a 

 necessary condition. By it alone, in any degree worth 

 naming, can the fruits of observation and experience 

 of one generation be husbanded to form a new start- 

 ing-point for a second, nor without it could there be 

 any concerted action or social life. The greatness of 

 the human Mind, after all, is due to the tongue, the 

 material instrument of reason, and to Language the 

 outward expression of the inner life. 



