228 UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO STUDIES 



and various birds, hawks and osprays and gulls seeking their living in the salt water 

 mid the waves of the sea utter at a different time noises widely different from those 

 they make when they are fighting for food and struggling with their prey. And 

 some of them change together with the weather their harsh croakings as the long- 

 lived races of crows and flocks of rooks when they are said to be calling for water 

 and rain, and sometimes to be summoning winds and gales. Therefore, if different 

 sensations compel creatures, dumb though they be, to utter different sounds, how 

 much more natural it is that mortal men in those times should have been able to 

 denote dissimilar things by many different words!' 



In running over these lines one readily notes that Lucretius agrees with 

 modern views in assigning language to both beasts and birds; that he 

 insists upon a pari passu development of a number of primitive ancestors ; 

 and that he thinks of the evolution of language as absolutely simple and 

 natural. 



In conclusion, I may answer the question of a friend as to what ends the 

 foregoing paper, including the sections on "The Immortality of the 

 Soul," was intended to serve. To begin with, we stand at the parting of 

 the ways. — ^The human race, however, always does stand at a parting 

 of the ways, and, I suppose, always will. — Monism and dualism are dis- 

 tinct paths claiming to lead us onward and upward to the highest planes of 

 moral life and intellectual thought, and one of these paths every thinking 

 man must follow. At such a time it might seem worth while to consider 

 monism at two significant points in its historical development, in the hope 

 of gaining some little knowledge, at any rate, as to the line as well as the 

 extent of its advance. That Haeckel and Lucretius conveniently repre- 

 sent two such points is obvious. Again, I take it to be true that a com- 

 parison of the views of two master-minds on a series of momentous ques- 

 tions is never without some profit. Furthermore, the hard-working 

 teachers of science and of classics often wish to bring together the two 

 stages of thought represented by our authors, and for them I have tried 

 to make such a comparison easily available. That the method of quoting 

 so extensively is open to criticism I am well aware ; but I have preferred 

 to stand aside and let the recorded words speak for themselves. From a 

 man's own words one may learn his thoughts, whereas an interpreter is 

 often misleading, if not misled. 



■ De R. N., V 1028-1090. 



