ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 3OI 



animals a language for communicating sensations, desires, 

 and thoughts, partly a language of gestures, partly a 

 language of feeling or touch, partly a language of cries 

 or sounds, but a real language of words or ideas, a so-called 

 " articulate " language, which by abstraction changes sounds 

 into words, and words into sentences, belongs, as far as we 

 know, exclusively to Man. • 



The origin of human language must, more than anything 

 else, have had an ennobling and transforming influence 

 upon the mental life of Man, and consequently upon his 

 brain. The higher differentiation and perfecting of the 

 brain and mental life as its highest function developed in 

 direct correlation with its expression by means of speech. 

 Hence, the highest authorities in comparative philology 

 justly see in the development of human speech the most 

 important process which distinguishes Man from his animal 

 ancestors. This has been especially set forth by August 

 Schleicher, in his treatise "On the Importance of Speech 

 for the Natural History of Man." ^ In this relation we see 

 one of the closest connections between comparative zoology 

 and comparative philology; and here the theory of develop- 

 ment assigns to the latter the task of following the origin 

 of language step by step. This task, as interesting as it is 

 important, has of late years been successfully undertaken by 

 many inquirers, but more especially by Wilhelm Bleek, who 

 has been occupied for seventeen years in South Africa with 

 the study of the languages of the lowest races of men, and 

 hence has been enabled to solve the question. August 

 Schleicher more especially discusses, in accordance with the 

 theory of selection, how the various forms of speech, like 

 aU other organic forms and functions, have developed by 



