vii EVOLUTION OF ARTICULATE SPEECH 371 



gives of speech is correct, then animals speak ; for, as is shown 

 by the instances I have given, and as the simple observation 

 of nature teaches, many of them indisputably possess " the 

 faculty of directly exchanging their thoughts by means of 

 sound." 



I go even farther, and maintain that even what is called 

 " articulate " speech does not constitute a distinction between 

 man and the lower animals. And in this the remarks of 

 Schleicher himself afford me assistance. For in the same 

 short paper he says : " Scientific investigation proves clearly 

 that speech is something which has been quite gradually 

 developed, something which once did not exist. The com- 

 parative anatomy of languages discloses that the more highly 

 organised languages have been evolved quite gradually from 

 simpler languages, probably in the course of very long periods 

 of time : at least the science of language finds nothing to 

 contradict the conclusion that the simplest modes of express- 

 ing thought by sound, the languages of simplest structure, 

 have gradually been derived from sound-gestures and imita- 

 tions of sounds such as animals employ. . . . But if speech 

 alone makes the man, then our primitive ancestors were not 

 at the beginning what we now call men, for they only 

 became men with the development of speech. But the 

 development of speech is for us equivalent to the evolution 

 of the brain and the vocal organs. Thus the results of the 

 science of language lead necessarily to the conclusion that 

 man has been gradually evolved from lower forms, a con- 

 clusion at which the natural science of the present day is 

 known to have arrived from other premises. For this reason 

 alone the investigation of speech is of great scientific import- 

 ance, especially in relation to the evolution of man. . . . 

 Those languages which have hitherto been analysed into 

 their simplest elements, and those which have remained at 

 the simplest stage of evolution, show that the oldest forms of 



