FY 
. Dec. 26, 1872] 
_ Jamaware of the rather “heavy” nature of the accom- 
panying table, but the matter is one of muchimportance and 
_ entirely dependent on observed facts, therefore I think you 
will consider it worthy of the spaceit will occupy. I have 
condensed it ‘as much as possible, and have, to the best 
of my knowledge, selected the most trustworthy and 
longest continued records at present in my hands. 
Having thus placed the data before your readers, it 
seems undesirable to occupy space with remarks as to 
my own opinion on the evidence; but I cannot help 
thinking that it is quite clear that the question must not 
rest where it is. The evidence is no doubt conflicting ; 
but I cannot think that it is chance alone that has given 
us (from Table I.):— 
Maximum sunspot years 1837 1848 1860 1871? 
Heavy rainfall re 1836 1848 1860 1872 
Amount of rainfall 33°49 35°98 33°34 734 
Per cent. above average 19 28 FS" -? 20 
Minimum sunspot years 1833 1844 1856 1867 
Small rainfall 1834 1844 1858 1868 
~ Amount of rainfall 24°52 23°72 22°79 ?28°8 
Per cent. below average 13 16 19 +2 
Almost identical results are given by Table II. 
G, J. SYMONS 
MAX MULLER ON DARWIN'S PHILOSOPHY 
OF LANGUAGE * 
1 a lecture recently delivered in connection with the 
Liverpool Literary and Philosophical Society, Prof. 
Max Miiller addressed himself to the phase of Mr. 
Darwin’s theory, which deals with the possibility 
of the higher animals acquiring the faculty of ar- 
ticulate speech. He first cleared the ground by some 
general remarks on the previous phases of this old, old 
controversy touching the origin and destiny of man, 
_ referring to the contention between the Materialists and 
the Idealists, and to the durable impression left upon 
this controversy by Kant’s wonderful “ Criticism on Pure 
Reason,” lamenting that Mr. Darwin and his followers 
should disregard the important conclusions resulting from 
previous controversies on this subject, and proceed as if 
their theory of evolution were new. Materialism, he said, 
is everywhere in the ascendant, while Idealism is almost 
become a term of reproach. In this riddle of mind and 
matter, the world is the theatre of a struggle for the 
primacy of mind over matter. But when the evolutionists 
contend that the development of the mind of man out of 
the mind of an animal is a mere question of time, the 
Professor felt inclined to treat the idea with impatience. 
Animals must be animals so long as they lack the faculty 
of abstracting general ideas. Darwin says: “I believe 
that animals have descended from at most four or five 
progenitors, and plants from an equal or lesser number, 
Analogy would lead us one step further, namely, to the 
belief that all animals and plants have descended from 
some one prototype. All organic beings have descended 
from some primordial form into which life was breathed by 
the Creator.” Prof. Max Miiller inferred that these four 
progenitors may be intended for the Radiata, Mollusca, 
Articulata, and Vertebrata; and said that Mr. Darwin 
holds firmly that man has been developed from some 
lower animal, that all animals have been so developed 
from the lowest to the highest order of organism, and 
that there is nothing peculiar in man which cannot be 
explained from germinal seeds or potential faculties 
existing in lower animals. This question of the descent 
of man may be called the controversy of the nineteenth 
‘ 
f * The following extracts have been forwarded to us by the lecturer, and 
are taken from the Liverpool Gazette. 
NATURE 
145, 
century, and requires the whole knowledge of the century 
to answer it adequately. The lecturer, confining him- 
self to the evolution theory as it affects language, essayed 
to show that between the language of animals and the 
language of man there is zo natural bridge, and that to 
account for human language such as we possess would 
require a faculty of which no trace has ever been dis- 
covered in lower animals. If, as Mr. Darwin begs us to 
assume, there were a series of developments graduating 
insensibly from ape to man, it would of course be im- 
possible to fix a definite point where the ape ended and 
the man began; but he asks us to assume that which 
does not exist, and without evidence to support this, of 
which there is none, the theory remains only a theory. 
Indeed, said the Professor, whenever the distance between 
two points in the chain of development seems too great, 
we are told again and again that we must only imagine a 
large number of intermitted beings representing grada- 
tions insensibly sloping up or sloping down, in order to 
remove all difficulty. So it isin the case between the 
monkey and the man. This point was illustrated most 
appositely by reference to the Hindoo notion that man 
is descended from the spirit of the Creator, through a 
series of links now extinct, the first descendant being 
g-toths God and 1-roth man, the second being 8-1oths God 
and 2-10ths man, and so on till man became Io-r1oths 
man and ceased to be of the essence of the Great Spirit. 
Mr, Darwin’s fallacy, he said, lurks in the very word 
“ development,” for the admission of this insensible gra- 
dation through a series of organised beings would elimi- 
nate not only the difference between ape and man, but 
likewise the difference between peat and coal, between 
black and white, between high and low—in fact it would 
do away with the possibility of all definite knowledge. 
Mr. Darwin admits that articulate language is peculiar 
to man, but contends that animals have, in a lower 
stage of development, the identical faculties necessary 
to the invention of articulate expressions. To this he 
replied that no development of mental faculties has ever 
enabled any animal to connect one single definite idea 
with one single definite word. He gave various illustra- 
tions of the essential difference between the expression 
of emotions and the expression of ideas or abstract con- 
ceptions, and argued at length as to the impossibility 
of mere emotional signs and sounds developing into 
articulate speech ; and he ridiculed the notion that the 
materials of language being given, all the rest was amere 
question of time, a natural gradation from the neigh of 
the horse to the poetry of Goethe. Man and animals 
possess emotional language in common, because man is 
an animal ; but animals do not possess rational language, 
because they are not man. This distinction between 
emotional and rational language, so far from being 
fanciful and artificial, is radical, as proved by various 
evidence, especially by the testimony of pathology in 
reference to certain brain diseases. Rational language 
is to be traced back to roots, and every root is the sign of 
a general conception or abstract idea of which the animal 
mind is incapable. Mr. Darwin has said there are savage 
languages which contain no abstract terms; but the 
names for common objects, such as father, mother, 
brother, &c., are abstract terms, and unless Mr. Darwin 
is prepared to produce a language containing no such 
names, his statement, said the lecturer, falls to the 
ground as the result of a misconception of the real nature 
of a general idea as distinguished from an emotion. 
This phase of the controversy lies within the Professor's 
peculiar domain, and he was able to entertain his audience 
with technical illustrations that in ordinary hands must 
have proved tedious, but in the hands of the most accom- 
plished linguist of the day proved a source of wonder and 
amusement to his hearers. He concluded as he had 
begun, by maintaining that language is the true barrier 
between man and beast, 
