[Footnote 1: _Miscellaneous Essays._ By Henry Thomas Colebrooke. With a Life of the author by his son. In three volumes. London: 1872.] [Footnote 2: The word +Gentoo+, which was commonly applied in the last century to the Hindus, is, according to Wilson, derived from the Portuguese word _gentio_, gentile or heathen. The word _caste_, too, comes from the same source.] [Footnote 3: See the list of words given at the end of this article, p. 400.] IX. MY REPLY TO MR. DARWIN. During the whole of the year that has just passed away, all my spare time has been required for the completion of my edition of the Rig-Veda and its Sanskrit commentary. I had to shut my eyes to everything else. Many a book which I felt tempted to read was put aside, and hardly a single Review could draw me away from my purpose. Thus it has come to pass that I did not know, till a few days ago, that some Lectures which I had delivered at the Royal Institution on “Mr. Darwin’s Philosophy of Language,” and which had been fully reported in “Fraser’s Magazine” for May, June, and July, 1873, had elicited a reply emanating from one who writes if not in, at least with Mr. Darwin’s name, and who himself would be, no doubt most proud to acknowledge the influence of “family bias.” I could not have guessed from the title of the paper, “Professor Whitney on the Origin of Language: by George H. Darwin,” that it was meant as an answer to the arguments which I had ventured to advance in my Lectures at the Royal Institution against Mr. Darwin’s views on language. It was only when telling a friend that I soon hoped to find time to complete those Lectures, that I was asked whether I had seen Darwin’s reply. I read it at once in the November number of the “Contemporary Review;” and, as it will take some time before I can hope to finish my book on “Language as the true barrier between Man and Beast,” I determined, in the meantime, to publish a brief rejoinder to the defense of Mr. Darwin’s philosophy, so ably and chivalrously conducted by his son. With regard to the proximate cause of Mr. Darwin’s defense of his father’s views on language--viz. an article in the “Quarterly Review,” I may say at once that I knew nothing about it till I saw Mr. G. Darwin’s article; and if there should be any suspicion in Mr. Darwin’s mind that the writer in the “Quarterly Review” is in any sense of the word my _alter ego_ I can completely remove that impression. It seems that the writer in the “Quarterly” expressed himself in the following terms with regard to Mr. Darwin’s competency on linguistic problems:-- “Few recent intellectual phenomena are more astounding than the ignorance of these elementary yet fundamental distinctions and principles (_i.e._, as to the essence of language) exhibited by conspicuous advocates of the monistic hypothesis. Mr. Darwin, for example, does not exhibit the faintest indication of having grasped them.”