304 THE DOCTRINE OF DESCENT. 
peculiarly normal remnants and witnesses of bygone 
linguistic periods. In short, down to the minutest 
details, linguistic research stumbles on accordance and 
analogies with the doctrine of the derivation of 
organisms. And, forsooth, we are to halt before the 
origin of language as before a something incomprehen- 
sible and inscrutable! 
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 con- 
nected with it, of a primordial state of higher perfection, 
a recourse to the incomprehensible and a return to a 
standpoint of mysticism. For that which is not under- 
stood is not necessarily incomprehensible. It is not our 
business to side with Geiger, who attributes an essential 
share in the ejaculation of words to the visual percep- 
tions, 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 
