The Descent of Alan 43 



Mr. JJarwin truthfully remarks on the great difference in 

 these respects between such creatures as ants and bees, and 

 singularly inert members of the same class — such as the 

 scale insect or coccus. But can it be pretended that the 

 action of natural and sexual selection has alone produced 

 these phenomena in certain insects, and failed to produce 

 them in any other mere animals even of the very highest 

 class ? If these phenomena are due to a power and faculty 

 similar in kind to human intelligence, and which power is 

 latent and capable of evolution in all animals, then it is 

 certain that this power must have been evolved in other 

 instances also, and that we should see varying degrees of it 

 in many, and notably in the highest brutes as well as in 

 man. If, on the other hand, the faculties of brutes are 

 different in kind from human intelligence, there can be no 

 reason whatever why animals most closely approaching man 

 in physical structure should resemble him in psychical nature 

 also. 



This reflection leads us to the difference which exists 

 between men and brutes as regards the faculty of articulate 

 speech. Mr. Darwin remarks that of the distinctively human 

 characters this has 'justly been considered as one of the 

 chief (vol. i. p. 53). We cannot agree in this. Some brutes 

 can articulate, and it is quite conceivable that brutes might 

 (though as a fact they do not) so associate certain sensations 

 and gratifications with certain articulate sounds as, in a 

 certain sense, to speak. This, however, would in no way 

 even tend to bridge over the gulf which exists between the 

 representative reflective faculties and the merely presentative 

 ones. Articulate signs of sensible impressions would be 

 fundamentally as distinct as mere gestures are from truly 

 rational speech. 



Mr. Darwin evades the question about language by in one 

 place (vol. i. p. 54) attributing that faculty in man to his 



