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Show 62 THE DESCENT OF MAN. PART L viated, and bastardised languages, which have borrowed expressive words and useful forms of construction from various conquering, or conquered, or immigrant races. From these few and imperfect remarks I conclude that the extremely complex and regular construction of many barbarous languages, is no proof that they owe their origin to a special act of creation.47 Nor, as we have seen, does the faculty of articulate speech in itself offer any insuperable objection to the belief that man has been developed from some lower form. Self-consciousness, Individuality, Abstraction, General Ideas, &c.-It would be useless to attempt discussing these high faculties, which, according to several recent writers, make the sole and complete distinction between man and the brutes, for hardly two authors agree in their definitions. Such faculties could not have been fully developed in man until his mental powers bad advanced to a high standard, and this implies the use of a perfect language. No one supposes that one of the lower animals reflects whence he comes or whither be goes,what is death or what is life, and so forth. But can we feel sure that an old dog with an excellent memory and some power of imagination, as shewn by his dreams, never reflects on his past pleasures in the chase ? and this would be a form of self-consciousness. On the other hand, as Biichner 48 has remarked, how little can the hard-worked wife of a degraded Australian savage, who uses hardly any abstract words and cannot count above four, exert her self-consciousness, or reflect on the nature of her own existence. 47 See some good remarks on the simplification of lano-ua<YeS by Sir J. Lubbock, 'Origin of Civilisation,' 1870, p. 278. 0 b ' 48 'Conferences sur la Theorie Darwinienne' French translat. 1869 p. 132. ' ' ' CHAP. II. MENTAL POWERS. 63 That animals retain their mental individuality is unquestionable. When my voice awakened a train of old associations in the mind of the above-mentioned dog; he must have retained his mental individuality,. although every atom of his brain had probably undergone change more than once during the interval of five years. This dog might have brought forward the argument lately advimced to crush all evolutionists,. and said, " I abide amid all mental moods and all "material changes .... The teaching that atoms leave· "their impressions as legacies to other atoms falling " into the places they have vacated is contradictory of " the utterance of consciousness, and is therefore false ; " but it is the teaching necessitated by evolutionism, " consequently the hypothesis is a false one." 49 Sense of Beauty.-This sense has been declared to be peculiar to man. But when we behold male birds elaborately displaying their plumes and splendid colours before the females, whilst other birds not thus decorated make no such display, it is impossible to doubt that the females admh·e the beauty of their male partners. As women everywhere deck themselves with these plumes, the beauty of such ornaments cannot be disputed. The Bower-birds by tastefully ornamenting their playing-passages. with gaily-coloured objects, as do certain bumming-birds their nests, offer additional evidence that they possess a sense of beauty. So with the song of birds, the sweet strains poured forth by the . males during the season of love are certainly admired by the females, of which fact evidence will hereafter be given. If female birds had been incapable of appreciating the beautiful colours, the ornaments, and voices 49 The Rev. Dr. J. M'Cann, 'Anti-Darwinism,' 1869, p. 13. |