Man never was, in my opinion, this pithecanthropus alalus whose portrait Hæckel has drawn as if he had seen and known him, whose singular and completely hypothetical genealogy he has even given, from the mere mass of living protoplasm to the man endowed with speech and a civilization analogous to that of the Australians and Papuans.[1579]
Hæckel, among other things, often comes into direct conflict with the “science of languages.” In the course of his attack on Evolutionism[1580] Prof. Max Müller stigmatized the Darwinian theory as “vulnerable at the beginning and at the end.” The fact is, that only the partial truth of many of the secondary “laws” of Darwinism is beyond question—M. de Quatrefages evidently accepting natural selection, the struggle for existence, and transformation within species, as proven not once and for ever, but only pro tempore. But it may not be amiss, perhaps, to condense the linguistic case against the “ape ancestor” theory:
Languages have their phases of growth, etc., like all else in Nature. It is almost certain that the great linguistic families pass through three stages.
(1) All words are roots and are merely placed in juxtaposition (Radical languages).
(2) One root defines the other, and becomes merely a determinative element (Agglutinative).
(3) The determinative element (the determinating meaning of which has long lapsed) unites into a whole with the formative element (Inflected).
The problem then is: Whence these roots? Prof. Max Müller argues that the existence of these ready-made materials of speech is a proof that man cannot be the crown of a long organic series. This potentiality of forming roots is the great crux which Materialists almost invariably avoid.
Von Hartmann explains it as a manifestation of the “Unconscious,” and admits its cogency versus mechanical Atheism. Hartmann is a fair representative of the Metaphysician and Idealist of the present age.
The argument has never been met by the non-pantheistic Evolutionists. To say with Schmidt: “Forsooth we are to halt before the origin of language!”—is an avowal of dogmatism and of speedy defeat.[1581]
We respect those men of Science who, wise in their generation, say: The Prehistoric Past being utterly beyond our powers of direct observation, we are too honest, too devoted to the truth—or what we regard as truth—to speculate upon the unknown, giving out our unproven theories along with facts absolutely established in Modern Science.