56 
THE DESCENT OF MAN. 
Part L 
biting different districts may be appositely compared, 
as Barrington remarks, “ to provincial dialects and 
the songs of allied, though distinct species may be com- 
pared with the languages of distinct races of man. I 
have given the foregoing details to shew that an in- 
stinctive tendency to acquire an art is not a peculiarity 
confined to man. 
With respect to the origin of articulate language, 
after having read on the one side the highly interesting 
works of Mr. Hensleigh Wedgwood, the Rev. F. Farrar, 
and Prof. Schleicher , 34 and the celebrated lectures of 
Prof. Max Muller on the other side, I cannot doubt that 
language owes its origin to the imitation and mo- 
dification, aided by signs and gestures, of various 
natural sounds, the voices of other animals, and man’s 
own instinctive cries. When we treat of sexual selec- 
tion we shall see that primeval man, or rather some 
early progenitor of man, probably used his voice largely, 
as does one of the gibbon-apes at the present day, in 
producing true musical cadences, that is in singing ; 
we may conclude from a widely-spread analogy that 
this power would have been especially exerted during 
the courtship of the sexes, serving to express various 
emotions, as love, jealousy, triumph, and serving as a 
challenge to their rivals. The imitation by articulate 
sounds of musical cries might have given rise to 
words expressive of various complex emotions. As 
bearing on the subject of imitation, the strong tendency 
in our nearest allies, the monkeys, in microcephalous 
34 4 On the Origin of Language/ by H. Wedgwood, 1866. ‘ Chapters 
on Language/ by the Rev. F. W. Farrar, 1865. These works are most 
interesting. See also ‘ De la Phys. et de Parole/ par Albert Lemoine, 
1865, p. 190. The work on this subject, by the late Prof. Aug. Schlei- 
cher, has been translated by Dr. Bikkers into English, under the title 
of ‘ Darwinism tested by the Science of Language/ 1869. 
