THE ORIGIN OF VERTEBRATED ANIMALS 197 



But has not language a history, has it not been 

 evolved gradually, and is it not constantly, even 

 daily, undergoing change ? Is not this evolution, 

 are not these changes of a nature precisely similar to 

 those which have governed the animal kingdom in 

 other branches, and have made it what it is at the 

 present day ? Did the English language suddenly 

 appear, was it specially created, or was it gradually 

 evolved by slow modification of other tongues, such 

 as Latin and Saxon ? Why do modern languages — 

 Italian, French, Spanish and Portuguese — have so 

 many words closely similar or identical ? Is it not 

 owing to descent from a common Latin ancestor ? 



Again, Latin and Greek have many likenesses to 

 one another, and with Celtic, Teutonic, Slavonic, and 

 the ancient dialects of India and Persia, may be all 

 regarded as descended from one common Indo- 

 European or Aryan stock. So Hebrew, Arabic, 

 and Syriac form a Semitic group. Moreover, " sup- 

 pose," says Max Mtlller, "we had no remnant of 

 Latin ; suppose the very existence of Rome and of 

 Latin were unknown to us, we might still prove on 

 the evidence of the six Romance dialects that there 

 must have been a time when these dialects formed 

 the language of a small settlement ; nay, by collecting 

 the words which all these dialects share in common, 

 we might to a certain extent reconstruct the original 

 language, and draw a sketch of the state of civilisa- 

 tion as reflected by these common words." 



Moreover, evidence of recapitulation is shown by 

 the way in which a child learns to speak its own 

 language, and " we know for certain that an English 



