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as asses commonly have, — the number of which, Mr. Tindal might reckon up 
for himself at his leisure, Now, I do not wish man to be considered as being 
in the position of Balaam’s ass, uttering sounds without corresponding ideas. 
There is a current of ideas which must pass through the mind of every 
man, civilized or savage ; and the natural striving of his mental being will be 
to express those sounds in some way, partly by gesture and partly by sounds, 
varying from the merely inarticulate to those developed as in the Sanskrit 
and our own language. 
The Chairman. — I shall now call upon Professor Young to reply to the 
observations made, though perhaps I may say that I agree with his paper, and 
think he has most logically carried out all that he attempted to set bciore us , 
a matter which I think in some of the replies has been lost sight of. Professor 
Young’s paper altogether proceeds as an answer to a certain hypothesis which 
has been brought strongly forward,— namely, that man is derived from the 
monkey, from the lower orders of creation, and in that position he has invented 
language. As I understand Professor Young’s argument (and he will correct 
me°if I am wrong), he proceeds to answer that hypothesis— his argument is 
altogether founded upon that ; — and it is no answer to him to state what man 
would do in a civilized state, or if created in that state ; for it does not touch his 
hypothesis. His argument is, if man was in such a low position as that, he would 
take that which is natural and not artificial. He maintains that spoken language 
is as arbitrary in its character as the signs which the deaf and dumb acquire in 
the finger alphabet. He shows us that the deaf and dumb possess one language 
with people who speak, a gesture-language, which would be sufficient for un- 
civilized man, and that having a natural language, man would not be forced 
to invent an artificial one. And I think all the arguments of the paper would 
stand in all their strength if he omitted everything with regard to the deaf 
and dumb. I do not think that altogether the case of Air. Reddie’s friend so 
far contradicts Professor Young’s examples. It depends upon the different 
circumstances in which the deaf and dumb person is placed, ihis deaf and 
dumb gentleman I suppose was in an educated family, and he found it con- 
venient to keep up the language lie possessed, rather than give to others 
the pain of spelling out their words ; and I can easily conceive that as 
a child brought up that way, he was forced by a kind of necessity to use 
language, however disagreeable at the time. Dr. Kitto recovered his 
language when forced upon him by a similar necessity, and I think the same 
kind of necessity which caused Dr. Kitto to recover his language would 
have also caused Mr. Reddie’s example to do the same. 
Professor Young.— Mr. Vice-President, you -have anticipated a good deal 
of what I should say in reply on this subject. With reference to Mr. 
Warington’s observations, I have little to say, because he has not kept to the 
hypothesis on which I started. He instances a case of man in a civilized 
state, who had got very considerably in advance and ahead of the people I 
had constructed my observations upon, and I have nothing to say to that. 
As to the interesting letter that Mr. Reddie has read from this gentleman 
who became deaf so young, that is one instance in opposition to those two 
