432 MENTAL EVOLUTION IN MAN. 



that the condition to this advance in mental evolution is given 

 by a perceptibly progressive development of those powers of 

 denotative and connotative utterance which are found as far 

 down in the psychological scale as the talking birds ; that in 

 the growing intelligence of a child we have thus as complete 

 a history of " ontogeny," in its relation to " phylogeny," as 

 that upon which the embryologist is accustomed to rely when 

 he reads the morphological history of a species in the epitome 

 which is furnished by the development of an individual ; and, 

 therefore, that those are without excuse who, elsewhere 

 adopting the principles of evolution, have gratuitously ignored 

 the direct evidence of psychological transmutation which is 

 thus furnished by the life-history of every individual human 

 being. 



Again, as regards the independent witness of philology, 

 if we were to rely on authority alone, the halting and often 

 contradictory opinions which from time to time have been 

 expressed by Professor Max M tiller with reference to our 

 subject, are greatly outweighed by those of all his brother 

 philologists. But, without in any way appealing to authority 

 further than to accept matters of fact on which all philo- 

 logists are agreed, I have purposely given Professor Max 

 Muller an even more representative place than any of the 

 others, fully stated the nature of his objections, and sup- 

 plied what appears to me abundantly sufficient answers. 

 So far as I can understand the reasons of his dissent 

 from conclusions which his own admirable work has materi- 

 ally helped to support, they appear to arise from the 

 following grounds. First, a want of clearness with regard 

 to the principles of evolution in general : * second, a failure 



* See especially Science of Thought, chaps, ii. and iv. The following 

 quotations may suffice to justify this statement. " If once a genus has been rightly 

 recognized as such, it seems to me self-contradictory to admit that it could ever 

 give rise to another genus. . . . Once a sheep always a sheep, once an ape always 

 an ape, once a man always a man. . . . What seems to me simply irrational is 

 to look for a fossil ape as the father of a fossil man. . . . Why should it be the 

 settled or ready-made Pithecanthropus who became the father of the first man, 

 though everywhere else in nature what has once become settled remains settled, 



