MENTAL POWERS. 97 



solely in his almost infinitely larger power of associating 

 together the most diversified sounds and ideas, and this 

 obviously depends on the high development of his mental 

 powers. 



As Home Tooke, one of the founders of the noble science 

 of philology, observes, language is an art, like brewing or 

 baking; but writing would have been a better simile. It 

 certainly is not a true instinct, for every language has to be 

 learned. It differs, however, widely from all ordinary arts, 

 for man has an instinctive tendency to speak, as we see in 

 the babble of our young children; while no child has an 

 instinctive tendency to brew, bake, or write. Moreover, no 

 philologist now supposes that any language has been delib- 

 erately invented; it has been slowly and unconsciously de- 

 veloped by many steps.* The sounds uttered by birds 

 offer in several respects the nearest analogy to language, 

 for all the members of the same species utter the same in- 

 stinctive cries expressive of their emotions; and all the 

 kinds which sing exert their power instinctively; but the 

 actual song, and even the call-notes, are learned from their 

 parents or foster-parents. These sounds, as Daines Bar- 

 ringtonf has proved, " are no more innate than language 

 is in man.^' The first attempts to sing " may be compared 

 to the imperfect endeavor in a child to babble." The 

 young males continue practicing, or as the bird-catchers 

 say, *' recording," for ten or eleven months. Their first 

 essays show hardly a rudiment of the future song; but as 

 they grow older we can perceive what they are aiming at; 

 and at last they are said " to sing their song round." 

 Nestlings which have learned the song of a distinct species, 

 as with the canary birds educated in the Tyrol, teach and 

 transmit their new song to their offspring. The slight 

 natural differences of song in the same species inhabiting 

 dift'erent districts may be appositely compared, as Barring- 



* See some good remarks on this head by Prof. Whitney, in his 

 ' Oriental and Linguistic Studies," 1873, p. 354. He observes that 

 the desire of communication between man is the living force, which, 

 in the development of language, "works both consciously and un- 

 consciously; consciously as regards the immediate end to be attained; 

 unconsciously as regards the further consequences of the act." 



f Hon. Daines Barrington in "Philosoph. Transactions," 1773, p. 

 262. See also Dureau de la Malle, in "Ann. des. Sc. Nat.," 3d 

 series, Zoolog. tom. x, p. 119. 



