168 ON CERTAIN MODERN VIEWS 



manifestors, when their connection with that organ is interrupted. If 

 " intellectual manifestations " ever depend on them it must be in a 

 mediatory sense, their own efficiency depending on that of the brain, 

 and their connection with that great centre of power and intelligence. 

 The doctrine sounds strangely also to those who have learned from the 

 principles of a long established philosophy that the brain is the seat 

 of the mental faculties, and that the organs of the senses are but 

 avenues which lead up to "the dome of thought." 



But it is Man's endowment with articulate speech which Prof. 

 Huxley regards as the preeminent advantage which he enjoys over 

 those whom he designates " his humble fellows." " Our reverence " 

 says he " for tire nobility of manhood will not be lessened by the 

 knowledge that he is one in substance and structure with the brutes, 

 for he alone possesses the marvellous endowment of intellectual and 

 rational speech, whereby in the secular period of his existence he has 

 slowly accumulated acd organized the experience which is almost 

 wholly lost with the cessation of every individual life in other anim-als." 

 Is not this, if the expression be allowed, an argument of a somewhat 

 hysteron proteron nature ? Which is necessary first, the mind to 

 frame rational speech, that is, language, or the speech to form the 

 mind 1 Is it by the mind or on the tongue that experience is organ- 

 ized — if by that term is meant its arrangement for future use ? And 

 let us ask, what would be the value of mere animal experience without 

 mental capacity to profit by it 1 Does the bird construct her nest 

 less accurately for her primal, incubation than she does for her 

 seventh ? Does the beaver or the bee improve by experience in the 

 science of architecture ? Is the spider less expert in deceiving and de- 

 stroying the unwary insect in the month of May than in the month of 

 June ? And do we not find that even when articulate speech is 

 denied, intelligent beings can profit by the results of their experience 1 

 Do not mutes, whose mental organization is unimpaired, when left in 

 the society of each other, devise certain modes of communicating ideas 

 and recording experience though the organs of speech, as such, be 

 abnormal and useless;? The doctrine of Prof. Max Miiller, that 

 language is "the outward expression of an inward power," is much 

 more philosophical than the theory we are now glancing at. 



In a highly poetic strain Prof. H. draws an analogy between Man 

 and the Alpine mountains, which, he says, though of one substance 

 with the dullest clay, have been raised " by inward forces to that place 



