III.] Dr. Bateman on Darwinism. 45 



scientific explanation. Immense as the fabric of 

 human speech has grown to be, it is undoubtedly- 

 based on sundry acts of discovery or invention — not 

 necessarily very conspicuous at the outset — among 

 primeval semi-human savages. The inventive acts 

 which led to the systematic use of vocal sounds for 

 the interchange of ideas, like the inventive acts which 

 resulted in bows and arrows and in cookery, are to be 

 regarded simply as instances of the general increase 

 in psychical plasticity which has been the funda- 

 mental fact in the genesis of man intellectually. In 

 other words, the existence of language is a fact no 

 more wonderful than the general superiority of human 

 over simian intelligence ; and when it shall have 

 been shown how the rigid mind of an ape might 

 acquire plasticity, the problem of the origin of lan- 

 guage, along with many other problems, will have 

 been, ipso facto, more than half solved. 



A great step in this direction was taken by Mr. 

 Wallace, when he pointed out that when variations in 

 intelligence have become, on the whole, more useful 

 to a race of animals than variations in physical con- 

 stitution, then natural selection must seize upon the 

 former to the relative neglect of the latter. This con- 

 clusion follows inevitably from the theory of natural 

 selection as conceived by Mr. Darwin ; and it further 



