e or the other of two conclusions seems inevitable.
As a law of evolution and progress, all organs are imparted to animals
for use and not for ornament. It seems consistent with what we know of
Nature, to suppose that the vocal organs of these lower forms are being
developed to meet a new requirement in the animal economy, or having
once discharged some function necessary to the being and comfort of the
animal, they are now lapsing into disuse and becoming atrophied. If they
are in the course of development, it argues that the creature which
possesses them must possess a rudimentary speech which is developing at
a like rate into a higher type of speech. If they are in a state of
decay or atrophy, it argues that the animal must have been able to speak
at some former period, and that now, in losing the power of speech it is
gradually losing the organ. In either case, the organs themselves would
be in a state of development in harmony with the condition of the speech
of the animal. [Sidenote: LIMITATIONS OF SPEECH] The function which
speech discharges is the communication of ideas, and its growth must
depend upon the extent of those ideas; and in all conditions of life,
and in all forms of the animal kingdom, the uses of speech are confined
to, and limited by the desires, thoughts, and concepts of those using
it. Its extent is commensurate with requirement. To believe that there
was a time in the history of the human race when man could not speak, is
to destroy his identity as man, and the romance of the _alalus_ could be
justified from a scientific standpoint only as a compromise between the
giants of science and superstition. Among the tribes of men whose modes
of life are simple, whose wants are few, and whose knowledge is confined
to their primitive condition, the number of words necessary to convey
their thoughts is very limited. Among some savage races there are
languages consisting of only a few hundred words at most, while as we
rise in the scale of civil and domestic culture, languages become more
copious and expressive as the wants become more numerous and the
conditions of life more complex. As we descend from man to the lower
animals, we find the types of speech degenerate just in proportion as we
descend in the mental and moral plane, but it does not lose its identity
as speech. Through the whole animal kingdom from man to protozoa, types
of speech differ as do the physical types to which they belong. But as
the