Professor Huxley adopts these words, and yet he would contradict them by strangely questioning whether articulate speech be absolutely peculiar to man or not?' We have not heard of any brute putting syllables together, or at least only one instance is on record giving the construction of a sentence naturally uttered by a brute, and that is in Gulliver's Travels, of which, as an Irish bishop said, We don't believe one-half. We should have better authority for natural grammar in brutes, for grammar there is in all articulate speech, if they possessed it; but as man alone thinks, he alone speaks, for words are thoughts uttered by audible or written signs or symbols. But Professor Huxley attributes the lack of language, and probably of logic, to defective organisation about the larynx and lips of apes. He adds: 'I find it very easy to comprehend that some equally structural difference may have been the primary cause of the immeasurable and practically infinite divergence of the Human from the Simian stirps.' What can this mean? The structural difference between man and the ape makes an infinite divergence, and yet the slightness of the structural difference is what the Professor so strenuously contends for. Surely, what caused the structural difference caused also the immeasurable divergence, and the idea presupposes a Power operating antecedently to the production of that difference and divergence, that is to say, the ape and the man were designed to be creatures infinitely divergent from each other and developed accordingly: a sufficient reason why they should not be classed together until

they can talk the matter over in a logical manner with each other.

We cannot believe that the ape is only a dumb kind of man, nor that man is a speaking kind of ape, and that is all the essential difference. The ape has a voice which he uses well enough for his purpose. There must be something behind to which the visible difference is conformed, or why does the difference thus persist in undeviating lines of descent, man producing man and ape ape? How can the anatomist continue to assert the essential similarity of man to the ape and yet assert the infinite divergence and difference between them? If the difference did not exist in the germ and the cause of the germ, how came the infinite divergence in the development? We can only suppose there is not an essential similarity, but rather an essential difference both in origin and end. In short, to suppose the possibility of the transmutation of one kind of being into another is to suppose a contradiction in terms, a mere absurdity. How, for instance, can a creature constructed to be moved only by instinct be converted into a creature whose perfection consists in being prompted by reason ? As Bunsen says, 'No length of time can create a man out of a monkey, because it never can happen; for it is a logical contradiction to suppose the growth of reason out of its opposite, instinct."*

If it be asserted that the transmutation of species

*Egypt, vol. iv. p. 54.

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means only that the offspring may take the character of a new and higher species, and not the transmutation of the actual nature, it amounts to the same thing, for how can the transmission of two similar natures make a new nature ? Parallel lines can never cross. In short, the ascent of brutes towards their maximum is away from man and not towards him.' Every kingdom of nature, instead of approaching nearer and nearer to the next above, till eventually passing into it, in reality becomes more and more remote from it.'* There is no development of one class into another; they have different beginnings and different endings: in root and in fruit ever and alike distinct, they cannot be improved one into the other. The improvement in a quadruped is quadrupedal, not quadrumanal; and the improvement in a monkey is a monkey's improvement, and not that of a man, for man's improvement is to think better, to reason better, to work better, to worship better, and to be a better man-that is, less and less subject to the mere animal instincts which, as the epitome of nature, he has but to rule them.

Reason is improvable only by instruction, and all instruction is a degree of revelation, an unveiling of the soul to itself by making known some truth to a mind capable of being prepared to receive any and all truth. Therefore reason is conjoined with speech, because reason alone can be taught words and meanings. The claim of humanity to be immortal rests

*See Life, its Nature, &c., p. 419.

on the fact that man speaks, and is spoken to, for language implies thought, and thought implies unlimited teachableness, since objects of thought are as boundless as the universe. The whole creation corresponds with reason, and speech in its fulness includes all philosophy. We cannot set boundaries to man's capacity to be taught, for our mind is of a nature to become by instruction more and more capable of apprehending the reason of things, and receiving more and more light out of the infinite intelligence. Hence, man ever looks up for higher knowledge. Wherever he dwells he forms some theory, however rude and incoherent, of his own relation to the Maker of all, ⚫ some faith concerning the dependence of his reason and its connection with invisible being and spiritual power. The highest science and philosophy we have amongst us may be but folly and superstition in comparison with the truth for which all awakened minds are ever looking. In moral sense, in self-consciousness, in conscience, in the feeling of the infinitely good and infinitely wise, the human reflects, however dimly, the divine, because God speaks to humanity in all things. For man was made to be taught how to attain his own perfection. Professor Huxley, in consistence with his theory, asserts that 'a man born dumb, notwithstanding his large brain, would be capable of few higher intellectual manifestations than an orang or chimpanzee, if confined to the society of dumb associates.' If this were true, no stronger evidence could be afforded of the connection of reason with speech.

But facts do not tell us that such a human existence, even in fancy, is possible; nor do facts affirm that a dumb man would, under any such circumstances, lose his human nature. Reason would still be in relation to the eternal Logos which speaks to man not only in words, but by every object that awakens the senses; and the eye is as much the medium of ideas as the ear, and the touch alone may tell of reason, as the pathetic and beautiful history of Laura Bridgman, and others similarly excluded from the 'sweet music of speech' and the intelligence of sight, abundantly proves. If touch alone were not in itself a sufficient avenue through which to arouse the rational soul to reasonable thought, how could such men as Dr. Howe have contrived to convey to the blind deaf-mute a knowledge of eternity and the love of Heaven, as he has done? Yes; the human finger is the instrument of reason, for reason feels the meaning of its touches, and with it alone Dr. Howe has taught the blind deaf-mute, so to say, to speak responsively to his own enlightened mind, as with discourse to touch our hearts, when Laura Bridgman with her first tangible utterances spon.. taneously spelt out the words, 'My mother loves me!' The human soul may lie buried in a living body, but it lies there waiting only the touch of the finger that can unstop the deaf ear and loosen the dumb tongue, that it may respond with all its faculties to the Great Teacher, for the human soul and no other is perfected by the teachings of love and truth. Let light reach the eye, and words the ear, and love the touch, and reason,