MENTAL POWERS. g9 



it is assuredly an error to spealc of any language as an art, in the 

 sense of its having been elaborately and methodically formed. 

 Philologists now admit that conjugations, declensions, &c., orig- 

 inally existed as distinct words, since joined together; and as 

 such words express the most obvious relations between objects 

 and persons, it is not surprising that they should have been used 

 by the men of most races during the earliest ages. With respect 

 to perfection, the following Illustration will best show how easily 

 we may err; a Crinoid sometimes consists of no less than 150,000 

 pieces of shell," all arranged with perfect symmetry in radiating 

 lines; but a naturalist does not consider an animal of this kind 

 as more perfect than a bilateral one with comparatively few 

 parts, and with none of these parts alike, excepting on the op- 

 posite sides of the body. He justly considers the differentiation 

 and specialization of organs as the test of perfection. So with 

 languages; the most symmetrical and complex ought not to be 

 ranked above irregular, abbreviated, and bastardized languages, 

 which have borrowed expressive words and useful forms of con- 

 struction from various conquering, conquered, or Immigrant races. 

 Prom these few and imperfect remarks I conclude that the ex- 

 tremely complex and regular construction of many barbarous lan- 

 guages, is no proof that they owe their origin to a special act 

 of creation." Nor, as we have seen, does the faculty of articulate 

 speech in itself offer any Insuperable objection to the belief that 

 man has been developed from some lower form. 



Sense of Beauty. — This sense has been declared to be peculiar 

 to man. I refer here only to the pleasure given by certain colors, 

 forms, and sounds, and which may fairly be called a sense of the 

 beautiful; with cultivated men such sensations are, however, 

 intimately associated with complex ideas and trains of thought. 

 When we behold a male bird elaborately displaying his graceful 

 plumes or splendid colors before the female, whilst other birds, 

 not thus decorated, make no such display, it is impossible to 

 doubt that she admires the beauty of her male partner. As 

 women everywhere deck themselves with these plumes, the beauty 

 of such ornaments cannot be disputed. As we shall see later, 

 the nests' of humming-birds, and the playing passages of bower- 

 birds are tastefully ornamented with gayly-colored objects; and 

 this shows that they must receive some kind of pleasure from the 

 sight of such things. With the great majority of animals, how- 

 ever, the taste for the beautiful is confined, as far as we can judge, 

 to the attractions of the opposite sex. The sweet strains poured 



'1 Buckland, 'Bridgewater Treatise,' p. 411. 



" See some good remarks on the simplification of languages, by Sir J. 

 Lubbock, 'Origin of Civilization,' 1870, p. 278. 



