CHAPTEE XXII. 



FROM BRUTE TO HUMAN INTELLIGENCE. 



as a being who reasons is dependent upon the 

 form of Language which he employs, to an extent that 

 can scarcely he over-estimated. It is hy virtue of this, 

 in great part, that he attains to such skill and excellence 

 in the carrying on of complex mental processes. And if, 

 in attempting to "bridge in the faintest way the great 

 intellectual and moral gap which sunders man from the 

 highest of the inferior animals, we say that he alone is 

 possessed of the power of speaking and of using Articulate 

 Language, we probably fix upon that power which, infi- 

 nitely above all others, has had to do with the gradual 

 progress that seems to have taken place during the lapse 

 of ages a progress which has enabled particular races of 

 man to advance through the multitudinous grades of 

 civilization intervening between those who lived in the 

 condition of savages, and those who now constitute the 

 flower of European civilization. If then the possession of 

 Articulate Speech, with the superadded accomplishments 

 growing out of this, of transmitting thought by means of 

 written and printed symbols, have had such an over- 

 whelming influence in aiding certain races to elevate 

 themselves out of a condition of the rudest barbarism, it 

 seems even more certain still that Thought in all its 

 higher modes could not be carried on at all without the 

 aid of Language of some kind." 



