LANGUAGE AND EACE. 391 



and it is lost again by isolation in uninhabited islands. It 

 is interesting to find that the young of such isolated animals 

 manifest no tendency to bark, in spite of the hereditar}^ 

 influence which might be expected after centuries of practice 

 of the habit ; but the natural sounds — howling, snarling, 

 etc. — are still used. As regards monkeys, the sounds they 

 utter are on the same level as those of the dop;. Some 

 naturalists, Pruner Bey for example, have stated that the 

 vocal organs of apes are not adapted to the formation of 

 articulate sounds ; but this seems to be a mistake. It is the 

 absence of a certain mental power, and of the control it 

 exerts, which alone makes the difference. Darwin, in his 

 Descent of Man (vol. i., p. 53), gives, as an example of the 

 power of vocal articulation, the case of certain monkeys in 

 Paraguay which utter six distinct sounds, each of which 

 produces a definite effect upon the other monkeys ; but I 

 cannot see that this power is different in kind from that 

 possessed by birds or dogs. 



The speech of man is divided from the sounds of intelli- 

 gence used by animals, not only by a far wider range of 

 communication, but also by the power of making known to 

 others mental perceptions, and, further than this, cognitions 

 which soar high above and beyond the reach of the mental 

 powers of animals. If the bark of the dog be the first 

 attempt at speech, it is a failure, in that a special sound is 

 not even assigned to any person in particular. Directly a 

 child consciously calls its father or mother, true speech has 

 begun. To the human race alone belongs the divine gift 

 of those mental powers which have given birth to speech. 

 Looks and modulations of voice seem to agree in all nations, 

 gestures only in part, thus forming the bridge by which we 

 may pass over into spoken language — the dividing element 

 in human history. The first three are used by the lower 



