20 THE EVOLUTION OF MAN. 



of Comparative Philology. Ever since Darwin, by the theory 

 of Natural Selection, infused new life into Biology, and raised 

 the fundamental question of development in every branch 

 of science, attention has frequently and from very different 

 quarters been called to the remarkable parallelism, which 

 exists between the evolution of the various human languages 

 and the evolution of organic species. The comparison is 

 quite justifiable and very instructive. Indeed it is hardly 

 possible to find an analogy better adapted to throw a clear 

 light on many obscure and difficult facts in the evolution of 

 species, which is governed and directed by the same natural 

 laws which guide the course of the evolution of language. 



All philologists who have made any progress in their 

 science, now unanimously agree that all human languages 

 have developed slowly and by degrees from the simplest 

 rudiments. On the other hand, the strange proposition 

 which till thirty years ago was defended by eminent au- 

 thorities, that language is a divine gift, is now universally 

 rejected, or at best defended only by theologians and by 

 people who have no conception of natural evolution. Such 

 brilliant results have been attained in Comparative Philoloo-y 

 that only one who is wilfully blind can fail to recoo-nize the 

 natural evolution of language. The latter is necessarily 

 evident to the student of nature. For speech is a physio- 

 logical function of the human organism, developing simul- 

 taneously with its special organs, the larynx and the tongue, 

 and simultaneously with the functions of the brain. It is, 

 therefore, quite natural that in the history of the evolution 

 of languages, and in their whole system, we should find the 

 same correlations as in the history of the evolution of 

 organic species and in their whole system. The various 



