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CHAPTER IX. 



SPEECH. 



We are now coming to close quarters with our subject. All 

 the foregoing chapters have been arranged with a view to 

 preparing the way for what is hereafter to follow ; and, there- 

 fore, as already remarked, I have thus far presented material 

 over which I do not think it is possible that any dispute can 

 arise. But now we come to that particular exhibition of the 

 sign-making faculty which not only appears to be peculiar to 

 man, but which obviously presents so great an advance upon 

 all the lower phases hitherto considered, that it is the place 

 where my opponents have chosen to take their stand. When 

 a man maintains that there is a difference of kind between 

 animal and human intelhgence, he naturally feels himself 

 under some obligation to indicate the point where this 

 difference obtains. To say that it obtains with the appearance 

 of language, in the sense of sign-making, is obviously too 

 wide a statement ; for, as we have now so fully seen, language, 

 in this widest sense, demonstrably obtains among the lower 

 animals. Consequently, the line m.ust be drawn, not at 

 language or sign-making, but at that particular kind of sign- 

 making which we understand by Speech. Now the distinctive 

 peculiarity of this kind of sign-making — and one, therefore, 

 which docs not occur in any other kind — consists in predica- 

 tion, or the using of signs as movable types for the purpose 

 of making propositions. It does not signify whether or not 

 the signs thus used are words. The gestures of Indians and 

 deaf-mutes admit, as we have seen, of being wrought up into 



