it is simply inconceivable that any stronger proof of mental evolution could be furnished, than is furnished in this one great fact by the whole warp and woof of the thousand dialects of every pattern which are now spread over the surface of the globe. We cannot speak to each other in any tongue without declaring the pre-conceptual derivation of our speech; we cannot so much as discuss the “origin of human faculty” itself, without announcing, in the very medium of our discussion, what that origin has been. It is to Language that my opponents have appealed: by Language they are hopelessly condemned. CHAPTER XVI. THE TRANSITION IN THE RACE. At this point I shall doubtless be expected to offer some remarks on the probable mode of transition between the brute and the human being. Having so fully considered both the psychology and philology of ideation, it may be thought that I am now in a position to indicate what I suppose to have been the actual stepping-stones whereby an intelligent species of ape can be conceived to have crossed “the Rubicon of Mind.” But, if I am expected to do this, I might reasonably decline, for two reasons. In the first place, the attempt, even if it could be successful, would be superfluous. The only objection I have had to meet is one which has been raised on grounds of psychology. This objection I have met, and met upon its own grounds. If I have been successful, for the purposes of argument nothing more remains to be said. If I have not been successful, it is obviously impossible to strengthen my case by going beyond the known facts of mind, as they actually exist before us, to any hypothetical possibilities of mind in the dim ages of an unrecorded past. In the second place, any remarks which I have to offer upon this subject must needs be of a wholly speculative or unverifiable character. As well might the historian spend his time in suggesting hypothetical histories of events known to have occurred in a pre-historic age: his evidence that such and such events must have occurred may be conclusive, and yet he may be quite in the dark as to the precise conditions which led up to them, the time which was occupied by them, and the particular method of their occurrence. In such cases it often happens that the more certain an historian may be that such and such an event did take place, the greater is the number of ways in which he sees that it might have taken place. Merely for the sake of showing that this is likewise the case in the matter now before us, I will devote the present chapter to a consideration of three alternative—and equally hypothetical—histories of the transition. But, from what has just been said, I hope it will be understood that I attach no argumentative importance to any of these hypotheses. * * * * *