10 THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES BY NATURAL SELECTION. 



originally numerous ; and for this obvious reason, that man 

 at his first appearance, in his then ignorance and helplessness, 

 must have been thmly scattered over the face of the earth ; and 

 this in small tribes or communities, so as to enable them to 

 obtain food. In that early stage men must have been ignorant 

 of each other's very existence, or, if one tribe knew another, 

 its knowledge would extend only to its nearest neighbour, 

 and then only in the quality of an enemy, contending with it 

 in a genume struggle for life, that is, for a bare subsistence. 

 Each isolated tribe had to frame its own language, and 

 hence a multiplicity of independent tongues was inevitable. 

 Accordingly, in proportion as we approach to the rude 

 primitive state of society, to which I am now referring, 

 independent languages are found to be numerous, while they 

 become fewer in proportion as we recede from it. 



The illustration, then, which the origin and history of 

 language is supposed to give the Darwinian theory, is simply 

 a mistake, and is not a whit more to the purpose than would 

 be the origin of the use of flints for cutting instruments, or 

 of clay for vessels. 



In further support of the Darwinian theory, it has been taken 

 for granted that no language — at least no European language 

 — has continued a living tongue beyond one thousand years ; 

 the object in this case being to show that languages, like or- 

 ganic species, are subject to transfonnation. I am satisfied 

 that the alleged fact is groundless. A language expresses the 

 ideas of the social condition of the people who speak it ; and 

 if that condition be stationary, the language must continue a 

 living tongue, not for one thousand years, but for ever. Thus 

 the languages of the Australians had reached the highest mark 

 which those of a people could possibly have attained whose 

 land yielded no plant for cultivation, no animals for domesti- 

 cation — who held no intercourse with strangers from whom 

 they could have derived benefit — and who, moreover, were 

 among the lowest types of mankind. A people in such a 

 condition being doomed savages, their languages would ne- 



