a2 Darwin, and after Darwin. 
the eighteenth), or, again, of a number of wholly unre- 
lated lines, circles, &c. (as certain speculative writers of 
the present century have imagined). But, on the other 
hand, if all species were separately and independently 
created, it becomes virtually incredible that we should 
everywhere observe this progressive arborescence of 
characters common to larger groups into more and 
more numerous, and more and more delicate, ramifi- 
cations of characters distinctive only of smaller and 
smaller groups. A man would be deemed insane if he 
were to attribute the origin of every branch and every 
twig of a real tree toa separate act of special creation ; 
and although we have not been able to witness the 
growth of what we may term in a new sense the Tree. 
of Life, the structural relations which are now apparent| 
between its innumerable ramifications bear quite as 
strong a testimony to the fact of their having been | 
due to an organic growth, as is the testimony furnished 
by the branches of an actual tree. 
Or, to take another illustration. Classification of 
organic forms, as Darwin, Lyell, and Hackel have 
pointed out, strongly resembles the classification of 
languages. In the case of languages, as in the case 
of species, we have genetic affinities strongly marked ; 
so that it is possible to some extent to construct a 
Language-tree, the branches of which shall indicate, 
in a diagrammatic form, the progressive divergence of a 
large group of languages from a common stock. For 
instance, Latin may be regarded as a fossil language, 
which has given rise to a group of living languages— 
Italian, Spanish, French, and, to a large extent, 
English. Now what would be thought of a philologist 
who should maintain that English, French, Spanish, 
