1886. ] Anthropology. 997 
"Tue Ortcin or Lancuaces—The vice-presidential address of 
| the Hon. Horatio Hale before Section H of the American Asso- 
ciation at Buffalo was upon the origin of languages and the an- 
l tiquity of speaking man. It contains views so original and novel 
that it is eminently proper to present a condensed scheme of the 
i argument. 
1. Among the puzzling questions in anthropology which we 
are bound to notice are these two: When did linguistic stocks 
: originate? When did man acquire the faculty of speech? It will 
i be seen that the origin of languages and the origin of language 
are two very different questions. 
Mr. Hale, rejecting the old theories which rely upon time, the 
dispersion of a monosyllabic parent stock, the dispersion of speech- 
Jess man and the origination of languages in different centers, 
avers that the origin of linguistic stocks is to be found in what 
may be called the language-making instincts of very young chil- 
dren. To insure the creation of a speech which shall be the par- 
ent of a new linguistic stock, all that is needed is that two or 
more young children should be placed by themselves in a condi- 
tion where they will be entirely, or in a large degree, free from 
the presence and influence of their elders, and that they should 
Continue in this condition long enough to grow up, to form a 
household, and to have descendants to whom they can communi- 
cate their new speech. This theory is elaborated with great care 
and the multiplicity of stocks in California made by a camping- 
ground of the argument. 
The second part of the argument is also accompanied with the 
ı revival of startling doctrines, namely, that while the antiquity of 
man is incalculable the speaking man is of recent origin, having 
occupied this planet at most not over ten thousand years. “If 
we are willing to give the name of man to a half brutish being, 
incapable of speech, we must allow to this being an existence of 
vast and as yet undefined duration, shared with the mammoth, 
the woolly rhinoceros, and other extinct animals. But if we term 
the beings of that race the precursors of man, and restrict the 
name of men to the members of the speaking race that followed 
them, then the first appearance of man, properly so styled, must 
be dated at about six thousand or ten thousand years ago. And 
this man who thus appeared was not a being of feeble powers, a 
dull-witted savage. He possessed and manifested from the first 
intellectual faculties—intellectual faculties of the highest order— 
Such as none of his descendants have surpassed. His speech, we 
_ May be sure, was not a mere mumble of disjointed. sounds ; it 
_ Was a full, expressive, well-organized speech, complete in all its 
| . The first men spoke because they possessed along with 
* the vocal organs the cerebral faculty of speech ; “ that faculty was 
| instinct of the mind, as irresistible as any other instinct.” 
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