1867.] Sir Charles Lyell and Modern Geology. 17 



hypothesis. Considering that the ' Antiquity of Man ' was written 

 for the educated public, not specially for naturalists, it scarcely 

 seems possible to conceive of a comparison better calculated to 

 bring home to the understanding a proper appreciation of the aim 

 and scope of the theory of " descent with modification." Professor 

 Max MiiUer has observed, "That if we knew nothing of the 

 existence of Latin, if all historical documents previous to the fifteenth 

 century had been lost, if tradition even was silent as to the former 

 existence of a Eoman empire, a mere comparison of the Italian, 

 Spanish, Portuguese, French, Wallachian, and Ehcetian dialects 

 would enable us to say that at some time there must have been a 

 language from which these six modern dialects derive their origin 

 in common." Further, " Latin itself, as well as Greek, Sanskrit, 

 Zend (or Bactrian), Lithuanian, old Sclavonic, Gothic, and Ar- 

 menian are also eight varieties of one common and more ancient 

 type, and .... have all such an amount of mutual resem- 

 blance, as to point to a more ancient language, the Aryan, which 

 was to them what Latin was to the six Bomance languages."* 

 Now if we substitute for the names of these various languages the 

 designations of allied species of animals or plants, having similar 

 chronological relations, and if for the words " dialect " and " lan- 

 guage " we substitute " species " and " variety," and so on, we have in 

 these sentences a correct exposition of the doctrine of transmutation 

 as applied to certain particular cases. The analogy is complete. 



But this is not all : Sir Charles Lyell shows that the objections 

 which would naturally be made by an illiterate person to the Aryan 

 hypothesis are precisely parallel to those often made to Mr. 

 Darwin's theory ; e. g. " We all speak as our parents and grand- 

 parents spoke before us," &c. Then there is the same difficulty 

 about the definitions of terms as in Natural History ; for instance, 

 " If this theory of indefinite modifiability be sound, what meaning 

 can be attached to the term language, and what definition can be 

 given of it so as to distinguish a language from a dialect ? " We 

 need not follow the comparison further ; sufficient has been quoted 

 to show the parallelism of the two cases, and the skill with which 

 Sir Charles Lyell has brought into relief those points of the 

 Aryan hypothesis which bear the most striking similarity to the 

 theory of Mr. Darwin. 



In conclusion, we must refer to Sir Charles Lyell's treatment of 

 the charge of Darwinism being inconsistent with the existence of a 

 Creator and the immortality of the soul. A reviewer asks, if there 

 was a transition from the instinct of the brute to the noble mind of 

 man, "at what point of his progressive improvement did Man 

 acquire the spiritual part of his body, and become endowed with 

 the awful attribute of immortality ? "f Sir Charles Lyell appeals 



* ' Antiquity of Man,' pp. 454, 455. f 'Antiquity of Man,' p. 502. 



VOL. IV. 



