124 THE DESCENT OF MAN 



those curious cases of brain disease in which speech is spe- 

 cially affected, as when the power to remember substantives 

 is lost, while other words can be correctly used, or where 

 substantives of a certain class, or all except the initial letters 

 of substantives and proper names, are forgotten.'" There is 

 no more improbability in the continued use of the mental 

 and vocal organs leading to inherited changes in their struc- 

 ture and functions, than in the case of handwriting, which 

 depends partly on the form of the hand and partly on 

 the disposition of the mind; and handwriting is certainly 

 inherited."' 



Several writers, more especially Prof. Max Miiller," have 

 lately insisted that the use of language implies the power of 

 forming general concepts; and that as no animals are sup- 

 posed to possess this power, an impossible barrier is formed 

 between them and man.°' With respect to animals, I have 

 already endeavored to show that they have this power, at 

 least in a rude and incipient degree. As far as concerns 

 infants of from ten to eleven months old, and deaf-mutes, 

 it seems to me incredible that they should be able to con- 

 nect certain sounds with certain general ideas as quickly as 

 they do, unless such ideas were already formed in their 



*" Many curious cases have been recorded. See, for instance, Dr. Bateman 

 "On Aphasia," 1870, pp. 27, 31, 53, 100, etc. Also, "Inquiries Concerning 

 the intelleclual Powers," by Dr. Abercrombie, 1838, p. 150. 



*' "The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication," vol. ii. p. 6. 



8' lectures on "Mr. Darwin's Philosophy of Language," 1813. 



'2 The judgment of a distinguished philologist, such as Prof. Whitney, wiU 

 have far more weight on this point than anything that I can say. He remarks 

 ("Oriental and Linguistic Studies," 18T3, p. 291), in speaking of Block's views: 

 "Because on the grand scale language is the necessary auxiliary of thought, 

 indispensable to the development of the power of thinking, to the distinctness 

 and variety and complexity of cognitions, to the full mastery of consciousness ; 

 therefore he would fain make thought absolutely impossible without speech, 

 identifying the faculty with its instrument. He might just as reasonably assert 

 that the human hand cannot act without a tool. With such a doctrine to start 

 from, he cannot stop short of Miiller's worst paradoxes, that an infant (in fans, 

 not speaking) is not a human being, and that deaf-mutes do not become pos- 

 sessed of reason until they learn to twist their fingers into imitation of spoken 

 words." Max Miiller gives in italics ("Lectures on Mr. Darwin's Philosophy 

 of Languages," 1813, third lecture) the following aphorism: "There is no 

 thought vyithout words, as little as there are words without thought" 

 What a strange definition must here be given to the vrord thought I 



