been speaking animals—the young having constantly acquired this art by imitating those who are older; and we may warrantably conclude that our first parents received it by immediate inspiration.”[142] There remained, however, the alternative that language might have been the result neither of Divine inspiration nor of human invention; but of natural growth. And although this alternative was clearly perceived by some of the earlier philologists, its full significance could not be appreciated before the advent of the general theory of evolution.[143] Nevertheless, it is here of interest to observe that the theory of evolution was clearly educed from, and applied to, the study of languages by some of the more scientific philologists, before it had been clearly enunciated by naturalists. Thus, for instance, Dr. Latham, while criticizing the passage above quoted, wrote in 1857:—“In the actual field of language, the lines of demarcation are less definitely marked than in the preceding sketch. The phenomena of growth, however, are, upon the whole, what it suggests.... In order to account for the existing lines of demarcation, which are broad and definite, we must bear in mind a fresh phenomenon, viz. the spread of one dialect at the expense of others, a fact which obliterates intermediate forms, and brings extreme ones into geographical juxtaposition.”[144] Now, at the present day—owing partly to the establishment of the doctrine of evolution in the science of biology, but much more to direct evidence furnished by the science of philology itself—students of language are unanimous in their adoption of the developmental theory. Even Professor Max Müller insists that “no student of the science of language can be anything but an evolutionist, for, wherever he looks, he sees nothing but evolution going on all around him;”[145] while Schleicher goes so far as to say that “the development of new forms from preceding forms can be much more easily traced, and this on even a larger scale, in the province of words, than in that of plants and animals.”[146] Here, however, it is needful to distinguish between language and languages. A philologist may be firmly convinced that all languages have developed by way of natural growth from those simplest elements, or “roots,” which we shall presently have to consider. But he may nevertheless hesitate to conclude, with anything like equal certainty, that these simplest elements were themselves developed from still lower ingredients of the sign-making faculty; and hence that not only all languages in particular, but the faculty of language in general, has been the result of a natural evolution.