y human being had a tail or a forty-four toothed snout, but
could use the language of concepts, then he would be and remain a man, as
far as I am concerned, in spite of all that. We, too, have a right to
express our convictions. They are as dear to us as to those who believe or
believed in the Protogenes Haeckelii. It is true we do not preach to the
whole world that our age is the great age of the study of language and
mind, and that it has cast more light on the origin of the mind (logogeny)
and on the classification of the human race (anthropology) than all other
sciences together. A little progress, however, we have made. Who is there
that still classifies the human race by their skulls, hair, anatomy, etc.,
and not by their speech? If, like zooelogy, we may borrow countless
millions of years, where is there any pure blood left, amid the endless
wars and migrations, the polygamy and slavery of the ancient world?
Language alone is and remains identical, whoever may speak it; but the
blood, "this very peculiar fluid," how can we get at that scientifically?
It is, however, and remains a fixed idea with these "consistent thinkers"
that the sciences of language and mind lead to superstition and hypocrisy,
while on the other hand the science of language gratefully acknowledges
the results of zooelogy, and only protests against encroachments. Both
sciences might advance peacefully side by side, rendering aid and seeking
it; and as for prejudices, there are plenty of them surviving among
zooelogists as well as philologists, which must be removed _viribus
unitis_. What is common to us is the love of truth and clearness, and the
honest effort to learn to understand the processes of growth in mind and
language, as well as in nature, in the individual (ontogenetically) as
well as in the race (phylogenetically). Whether we now call this evolution
or growth, philology at all events has been in advance of natural science
in setting a good example, and securing recognition of the genetic method.
Such men as William Humboldt, Grimm, and Bopp did not exactly belong to
the dark ages, and I do not believe that they ever doubted that man is a
mammal and stands at the head of the mammalia. This is no discovery of the
nineteenth century. Linnaeus lived in the eighteenth century and Aristotle
somewhat earlier. I see that the Standard Dictionary already makes a
distinction between Darwinism and Darwinianism, between the views of
Darwin and thos