234 ORGANIC EVOLUTION CONSIDERED 



mains yet known of pre-historic man do not indicate 

 any material diminution in the size of the brain-case." 



Natural selection assumes that progress does not 

 take place beyond what is demanded by environment. 

 This being true, how is it possible to account for the 

 large size of the brains of savages? 



When man began to emerge he had to contend with 

 nothing higher than brutes, and a small increase in 

 brain would enable him to do this successfully. 



Savages have capacities for education far greater 

 than is demanded by their mode of living. The same 

 is true of their moral and religious capacities. They 

 have latent powers of mind which anticipate a more 

 advanced state of existence than that of the savage 

 condition in which they have existed for ages. Pow- 

 ers which have, therefore, been dormant for thousands 

 of years, could not have been preserved because they 

 were useful, but, on the other hand, they should have 

 disappeared by disuse. 



Max Miiller says that "between the language of 

 animals and the language of man there is no natural 

 bridge, and that to account for human language such 

 as we possess would require a faculty of which no 

 trace has ever been discovered in lower animals. 



"Rational language is to be traced back to roots, 

 and every root is the sign of a general conception or 

 abstract idea of which the animal mind is incapable. 

 Mr. Darwin has said there are savage languages which 

 contain no abstract terms; but the names for com- 

 mon objects, such as father, mother, brother, etc., 

 are abstract terms, and unless Mr. Darwin is prepared 

 to produce a language containing no such names, his 

 statement, said the lecturer, falls to the ground as the 

 result of a misconception of the real nature of a gen- 

 eral idea as distinguished from an emotion."" * 



* Abstract of his Lecture on Nature, Dec. 1872, p. 145. 



