
articulate and inarticulate speech. In short, the great abyss which was
of old thought to lie between the languages of man and the lower animals
has largely vanished through the labors of philologists, and we can
trace stepping-stones over every portion of the wide gap. The language
of man has not alone been evidently a product of evolution, but also one
of development from the vocal utterances of the lower animals; and the
man-ape, in its slow and long progress from brute into man, seems to
have gradually developed that noble instrument of articulate speech
which has had so much to do with subsequent human progress.




VIII

HOW THE CHASM WAS BRIDGED


In his bodily formation the man-ape differed little from man. The
differences which existed were probably of a minor character, no greater
than could readily exist within the limits of a species. If this
assertion be questioned, it seems sufficient to call attention to the
recent researches into the anatomy of the anthropoid apes, which differ
in species, if not in genera, from man, yet are closely similar to him
in all their main features of organization. Even in the brain, to whose
great development man owes his superiority, the only marked difference
is in size. Structurally, the distinctions are unimportant. If, then,
these distant relatives so closely resemble man in physical frame, his
immediate relative in the line of descent must have approached him still
more closely in organization. After this ancestor had become a true,
surface-dwelling biped, the differences in structure were probably so
slight that physically the two forms were in effect identical. The
man-ape was, as there is reason to believe, considerably smaller than
man, perhaps about equal in size and stature to the chimpanzee, but
that does not constitute a specific difference. There may have been some
differences in the skeletal and muscular structure. The vocal organs,
for instance, probably differed, the evolution of language in man being
accompanied with certain changes in the larynx. The