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leading members, who, as a philologist, has arrived at the 
conclusion that the original inhabitants of Europe must have 
been mutes ! 
Having referred to this theory, I feel, bound to give you 
some extracts from the paper in which it is put forth, that this 
allusion to it may not give rise to misunderstanding ; lor Ihnd. 
that the author of the paper, the Reverend Dunbar Heath, 
considers that mute men may be men who speak ! He says : 
wish my readers to understand that by mute men I mean 
men who may or may not use words, but who only express 
emotions by them, and that such emotions are the individual 
emotions of the mute being.” This, he concludes, was once 
the condition of the inhabitants of Europe, “ in the days oi 
woolly elephants and rhinoceroses,” and of kitchen-middens. 
But he wishes it “ to be clearly understood that he is not 
writing and has never yet written on the origin of language, 
but on the transmission of language from tribe to tribe when 
once it has been acquired.-” _ 
He then curiously proceeds to give his readers a graphic 
conception of the state of things among Europeans before the 
Aryans came among them to teach them how to speak. He 
says : — 
“ I am about to bring before the reader a conception of certain kitchen- 
middens occupied by what I call mutes, and subjected to the rationalising 
influences of a further advanced set of men whom I call speakers.” 
In explanation of this theory he “ divides the development 
of nature, between the nebular chaos and the present state ol 
thin ^s, into the three most fundamental of all possible groups 
or divisions.” The first comprises "the organization of 
matter ; ” the second “ those [sic] which bring these^early 
organisms into a sensationalised or emotionalized state ; anu 
third, “the rationalising of emotions.” He adds 
« That vast time was taken in the organizing of matter, I take as a proven 
fact from the hands of geology and physical cosmogony.”— “ I mean by this 
that there was a vast time during which our mundane system contained 
matter without organism, and a further vast time during which organism 
was increasing in complexity before it arrived at its present state. - that 
there was also a vast time during which organism existed without sensation, 
is equally admitted. Yast is the step from unorganised matter to organism, 
but equally vast is that from organism to sensation.” 
You, in this Institute, as rational beings, will no doubt 
readily admit that “vast is the step from unorganized matter 
to organism,” and “ from organism to sensation. io us it 
will appear analogous to and quite as vast as is the difference 
