LUCRETIUS AND HAECKEL 227 



his reason to attain such high developments." Others have worked out 

 the theory of Hnguistic evolution in such detail that he has only to sum- 

 marize their results. Lucretius, however, was not so fortunate, and he 

 writes at greater length as follows : 



But nature impelled them to utter the various sounds of the tongue and use 

 struck out the names of things, much in the same way as the inability to speak is 

 seen in its turn to drive children to the use of gestures, when it forces them to point 

 with the finger at the things which are before them. For everyone feels how far he 

 can make use of hu peculiar powers. Ere the horns of a calf are formed and project 

 from his forehead, he butts with it when angry and pushes out in his rage. Then 

 whelps of panthers and cubs of lions fight with claws and feet and teeth at a time 

 when teeth and claws are hardly yet formed. Again we see every kind of fowl 

 trust to wings and seek from pinions a fluttering succour. Therefore, to 

 suppose that some one man at that time apportioned names to things, and that 

 men from him learnt their first words, is sheer folly. For why should this 

 particular man be able to denote all things by words and to utter the various sounds 

 of the tongue, and yet at the same time others be supposed not to have been able 

 to do so? Again if others as well as he had not made use of words among them- 

 selves, whence was implanted in this man the previous conception of its use and 

 whence given to him the original faculty to know and perceive in mind what he 

 wanted to do? Again one man could not constrain and subdue and force many 

 to choose to learn the names of things. It is no easy thing in any way to teach 

 and convince the deaf of what is needful to be done; for they never would suffer nor 

 in any way endure sounds of voice hitherto unheard to continue to be dinned fruitlessly 

 into their ears. Lastly, what is there so passing strange in this circumstance, that the 

 race of men, whose voice and tongue were in full force, should denote things by 

 different words as different feelings prompted ? Since dumb brutes, yes, and the 

 races of wild beasts are accustomed to give forth distinct and varied sounds when 

 they have fear or pain and when joys are rife. This you may learn from facts plain 

 to sense; when the large, spongy, open lips of Molossian dogs begin to growl enraged 

 and bare their hard teeth, thus drawn back in rage they threaten in a tone far dif- 

 ferent from that in which they bark outright and fill with sounds all the places round. 

 Again when they essay fondly to lick their whelps with their tongue, or when they 

 toss them with their feet and snapping at them make a feint with lightly closing 

 teeth of swallowing though with gentle forbearance, they caress them with a yelping 

 sound of a sort greatly differing from that which they utter when, left alone in a 

 house, they bay or when they slink away howling from blows with a crouching 

 body. Again is not the neigh, too, seen to differ, when a young stallion in the flower 

 of age rages among the mares smitten by the goads of winged love, and when with 

 wide-,stretched nostrils he snorts out the signal to arms, and when as it chances 

 on any other occasion he neighs with limbs all shaking? Lastly, the race of fowls 



