30 8 A Limit to Evolution 



spontaneously by children as soon as they begin to speak, 

 and ' quack-quack ' and ' ^^qq-^<^q ' are just as good abstract 

 universal terms as are ' duck ' and ' horse.' Children begin 

 by giving terms very wide meanings which they subsequently 

 learn to restrict. This faculty of abstraction must, then, be 

 possessed by every one who speaks, but it is also possessed by 

 human beings who do not speak. 



The difference between human rational language and the 

 merely emotional language of animals and of men, does not 

 depend upon the fact of Articulation. It consists in the 

 appropriation or the non-appropriation of sounds and ges- 

 tures to denote abstract ideas. Pafrots articulate, but do 

 not thereby express ' ideas.' Mutes do not articulate, but by 

 their gestures they do express ' ideas.' 



At an institution for the dumb in Edinburgh, the Lord's 

 Prayer is acted by mutes in an elaborate manner. The idea 

 ' Father ' is expressed in an action indicating ' old man.' 

 The idea 'name,' by touching the forehead and indicating 

 spelling on the fingers. The idea ' done ' by the hands work- 

 ing. The conception ' on earth as it is in heaven,' by two signs,, 

 for Heaven and Earth, and by putting the forefingers side 

 by side to express 'equality,' and so on. But the satisfactory 

 nature to mutes of their gesture-language is shown by the 

 protests in the newspapers recently made by some of them 

 in its favour, and against the system of teaching them to- 

 utter articulate words. The great expressiveness of such 

 gesture-language is also shown by the frequent performances 

 of whole plays by gesture, without the utterance of a single 

 word, as in various ballets. It is thus abundantly evident 

 that rational conceptions — ' abstract ideas ' — can exist with- 

 out spoken words. Language, therefore, is the consequence 

 of thought, and abstract ideas are indispensable preliminaries 

 of language. We see this in our common experience. When, 

 in the cultivation of any science or art, newly observed facts 



