ox IXSEOT SOUNDS. 223 



(beyond the feeling of the individual concerned) where any approach 

 to language is out of the question ? Why again restrict the effect 

 of such sounds as signs of intercommunication to individuals of the 

 same species only ? And linally, why admit the exercise of faculties 

 yet unproved, because we fancy that insects must have that mutual 

 understanding brought about by states of consciousness of which 

 we alone as speaking animals are cognisant.'- 



The connection between vocal utterance and speech has, for our 

 comprehension, innumerable breaks of continuity, missing links 

 which we can neither follow nor measure. And to infer that, 

 because a sound is not emitted by the mouth, it is not speech, or 

 that an oral utterance of voice is speech, helps us little to a 

 delinition of either. Between these totally distinct functions of 

 voice and speech there intervene, firstly — the agreement between 

 sounds and a correlative organ and faculty of hearing ; secondly — 

 a sequence of psychical phenomena beginning with subjective 

 consciousness, and passing through unknown phases of mental 

 re-action and re-direction of the original impulse under the control 

 of the will : in short, all that we imply in the word cerebration. 



Now it is clear that the meta-physical origin and attributes of 

 speech cannot be predicated of any animal in whom no adequate 

 instrument of cerebration has been found, still less when the 

 existence of such an organ has been disprov^ed. We know, on the 

 contrary, that even in man articulate utterance is a painfully 

 acquired result of training, and that it is acquired not merely by 



* The assumption that mental consciousness is necessary to every kind 

 of sensation is disproved bj'' many facts. All organisms unprovided with 

 train or nervous system of any kind must necessarily be void of cerebral 

 consciousness, though some low form of oi'ganic sensation can scarcely be 

 denied to them. In all reflex action the excitation of the motor fibre is said 

 to take place wdthout the aid of consciousness. An impression from without 

 penetrates by the route of some afferent nerve to the ganglionic centre with 

 which it is connected, and thence passes to the efferent nerve, traveling ly 

 another route to a given destination. But some capacity of receiving the 

 original imj^ression must be attributed to the peripheral end of the afferent 



