370 ORGANIC GROWTH 



animals. One of them, Schleicher, 1 remarks : " Speech, that 

 is, the expression of thoughts by words, is the only character 

 exclusively peculiar to man "; in support of which conclusion 

 he appeals to Huxley's well-known essay " Man's Place in 

 Nature," in which that investigator comes to the conclusion 

 that speech alone separates man from the anthropoid apes 

 most nearly related to him. 



But even though these anthropoid apes have really no 

 power of speech, it does not follow that the faculty is not 

 possessed by other animals. 



Let us learn of those who study language what speech 

 consists in. 



Schleicher says on this point : " Sound-gestures, in some 

 cases highly -developed sound -gestures, for the direct ex- 

 pression of its feelings and desires, the animal possesses, and 

 by means of these, as by means of other gestures, animals are 

 able to communicate their feelings to one another. Accord- 

 ingly it is usual to talk of the speech of animals. But the 

 faculty of directly expressing thought by means of sound is 

 possessed by no animal, and this alone is the meaning of 

 speech. How fully this is in fact recognised in our ordinary 

 consciousness is shown by the consideration that an ape 

 endowed with speech, or even an animal utterly different 

 from man externally, if it possessed the power of speech, 

 would be regarded by us as a man." 



The zoologist and the anatomist, be it remarked by the 

 way, would leave the attitude of mind described in the last 

 sentence to the philologist, and likewise the subsequently- 

 expressed conclusion that microcephalous idiots are not to be 

 regarded as really human, because in these speech, and even 

 the capacity for it, is wanting. 



But apart from this, if the definition which Schleicher 



1 A. Schleicher, Ueber die Bedeutung der Sprache fur die Naturgeschichte 

 des Menschen, Weimar, 1865. 



