304 THE DOCTRINE OF DESCENT. 



culiarly normal remnants and witnesses of bygone lin- 

 guistic periods. In short, down to the minutest details, 

 linguistic research stumbles on accordance and analo- 

 gies with the doctrine of the derivation of organisms. 

 And, forsooth, we are to halt before the origin of lan- 

 guage as before a something incomprehensible and in- 

 scrutable ! 



This is not done, however, by the majority of com- 

 parative linguists in the present day. Though Max 

 Miiller calls the roots " phonetical fundamental types 

 produced by a power inherent in human nature," though, 

 according to him, man in a more perfect state possessed 

 the power of giving to the reasonable conceptions of his 

 mind a better and more subtle expression, the talented 

 Lazarus Geiger *^ terms the hypothesis of a now extinct 

 power of forming languages, and the other hypothesis 

 connected with it, of a primordial state of higher perfec- 

 tion, a recourse to the incomprehensible and a return to 

 a standpoint of mysticism. For that which is not un- 

 derstood is not necessarily incomprehensible. It is not 

 our business to side with Geiger, who attributes an essen- 

 tial share in the ejaculation of words to the visual per- 

 ceptions, or with Bleek, G. Curtius, Schleicher, Steinthal, 

 and many others, who assign to the imitation of sounds 

 the first place in the evocation of language. This much 

 is, however, certain, that although those who are not 

 critical, find Max Miiller's standpoint highly convenient, 

 in science, it is unique. In this province, interwoven as 

 it is with the investigation of nature, the greater number 

 of authorities, on linguistic grounds, comparative and 

 philosophical, have been forced to the conclusion that, 

 from an irrational primordial state, man-like beings grad- 



