THE TRAXSITION IN THE RACE. 363 



presents itself, Why have not the lower animals developed 

 speech ? According to the above doctrine, aboriginal and 

 hitherto speechless man started without any superiority in 

 respect of the sign-making faculty, and thus far precisely 

 resembled what is taken to be the present psychological 

 condition of the lower animals.* Why, then, out of the same 

 original conditions has there arisen so enormous a difference 

 of result ? If, in the case of mankind, associations of mean- 

 ingless sounds with particular states, objects, &c., led to a 

 substitution of the former for the latter, and thus gave to 

 them the significance of names, how are we to account for the 

 total absence of any such development in brutes ? To me it 

 appears that this is clearly an unanswerable difficulty ; and 

 therefore I do not wonder that the so-called interjectional 

 theory of the origin of speech has brought discredit on the 

 whole philosophy of the subject. But, as so often happens 

 in philosophical writings, we have here a case where an 

 important truth is damaged by imperfect or erroneous 

 presentation. All the principles set forth in the above 

 hypothesis are sound in themselves, but the premiss from 

 which they start is untrue. This premiss is, that aboriginal 

 man presented no rudiments of the sign-making faculty 

 — that this faculty itself required to be originated de novo by 

 accidental associations of sounds with things. But, as we 

 now well know from all the facts previously given, even the 

 lower animals present the sign-making faculty in no mean 

 degree of development ; and, therefore, it is perfectly certain 

 that the " Urmenschen," at the time when they were 

 " sprachlosen," were not on this account zeichenlosen. The 

 psychological germ of communication, which probably could 

 not have been created by merely accidental associations 

 between sounds and things, must already have been given in 

 those psychological conditions of receptual ideation which 

 are common to all intelligent animals. 



But to this all-essential germ, as thus given, I doubt not 

 that the soil of such associations as the interjectional theory 



• See, for example, F. Miillcr, /<v. aV., i. 36, 37. 



