LANGUAGE AND MIND. 



305 



ually became human, while with language, the work of 

 many years, reason made its appearance. 



As early as 1851, when the doctrine of Descent was 

 still unheard of, Steinthal ^^ says : " As language arises, 

 mind originates." Ten years after Darwin, Geiger 

 writes: " Language created reason; before language, 

 man was irrational." To him, and to all who have aban- 

 doned the standpoint of mysticism-, " man is a genus 

 springing from an animal condition by means of the 

 origin and unfolding of his idiosyncrasy." And this con- 

 clusion is not, as orthodoxy and reaction are anxious to 

 impress upon the multitude, borrowed from Darwinism, 

 but deduced from linguistic inquiry in its own way, only 

 by a scientific method. It need only be indicated that, 

 as Geiger has historically proved in so many instances, 

 " slow development, the emergence of contrast from im- 

 perceptible deviations, is the cause that the same word ac- 

 quires various meanings ; " that the creation of language 

 therefore rests upon this process, and nowhere makes its 

 appearance suddenly and abruptly; that the so-called laws 

 of sound are habits of sound; that the special meaning 

 which a sound has acquired in lapse of time is always the 

 result of mere chance, or, in other words, of development. 



This deduction of linguistic inquiry most fully con- 

 firms the result of natural inquiry. And any one who 

 takes the trouble to follow the course of linguistic science 

 will be convinced that its champions, except, perhaps, 

 Bleek, Schleicher, and Friedrich Miiller, are labouring 

 rather to discredit, than to acknowledge, the influence of 

 the doctrine of Descent. All the higher is our estimate 

 of it, and therewith the most powerful objection to the in- 

 clusion of man in the great law of derivation is set aside. 



