no doubt that there is a limit to individual variability which 

 neither time nor skill avail to remove. As M. Blanchard 

 asserts in his work, La vie des ctrcs animes (p. 102), "All 

 investigation and observation make it clear that, while the 

 variability of creatures in a state of nature displays itself 

 in very different degrees, yet, in its most astonishing man- 

 ifestations, it remains confined within a circle beyond which 

 it cannot pass." 



It is interesting to observe how writers of the Dar- 

 winian school attempt to explain the origin of articulate 

 language as a gradual development of animal sounds. "It 

 does not," observes Darwin, "appear altogether incredible 

 that some unusually wise ape-like animal should have 

 thought of imitating the growl of a beast of prey, so as to 

 indicate to his fellow monkeys the nature of the expected 

 danger. And this would have been a first step in the for- 

 mation of a language." But what a tremendous step! An 

 ape-like animal that "thought" of imitating a beast must 

 certainly have been "unusually wise." In bridging the 

 chasm which rational speech interposes between man and 

 the brute creation, the Darwinian is forced to assume that 

 the whole essential modification is included in the first step. 

 Then he conceals the assumption by parcelling out the ac- 

 cidental modification in a supposed series of transitional 

 stages. \'He endeavors to veil his inability to explain the 

 first step, as Chevalier Bunsen remarked, by the easy but 

 fruitless assumption of an infinite space of time, destined 

 to explain the gradual development of animals into men; 

 as if millions of years could supply the want of an agent 



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