62 
THE DESCENT OF MAN. 
Part I. 
viated, and bastardised languages, which have borrowed 
expressive words and useful forms of construction from 
various conquering, or conquered, or immigrant races. 
From these few and imperfect remarks I conclude 
that the extremely complex and regular construction of 
many barbarous languages, is no proof that they owe 
their origin to a special act of creation . 47 Nor, as 
we have seen, does the faculty of articulate speech in 
itself offer any insuperable objection to the belief that 
man has been developed from some lower form. 
Self-consciousness , Individuality , Abstraction , General 
Ideas , &c . — It would be useless to attempt discussing 
these high faculties, which, according to several recent 
writers, make the sole and complete distinction between 
man and the brutes, for hardly two authors agree in their 
definitions. Such faculties could not have been fully 
developed in man until his mental powers had advanced 
to a high standard, and this implies the use of a perfect 
language. No one supposes that one of the lower ani- 
mals reflects whence he comes or whither he goes, — 
what is death or what is life, and so forth. But can 
we feel sure that an old dog with an excellent memory 
and some power of imagination, as shewn by his 
dreams, never reflects on his past pleasures in the 
chase ? and this would be a form of self-consciousness. 
On the other hand, as Biichner 48 has remarked, how 
little can the hard-worked wife of a degraded Australian 
savage, who uses hardly any abstract words and cannot 
count above four, exert her self-consciousness, or reflect 
on the nature of her own existence. 
47 See some good remarks on the simplification of languages, by Sir 
J. Lubbock, 4 Origin of Civilisation,’ 1870, p. 278. 
48 £ Conferences sur la Theorie Darwinienne,’ French translat., 1869, 
p. 132. 
