98 Chapter VI. 



language not only to communicate his feelings and 

 experiences to his fellow men, but still more to extend 

 and to generalize his knowledge through phonetic or 

 graphic memory images or symbols. This raises him 

 to an immeasurable height above the highest animal. 

 However, I cannot deny a slight power of abstraction 

 to animals. Probably it does not go beyond abstrac- 

 tions of the first order, those which immediately result 

 from sense perceptions and feelings, and in the human 

 being refer to the properties of things, to feelings and 

 emotions. Higher animals, as dogs and monkeys, are 

 able to connect such general notions with sense percep- 

 tions of the present, and with memory images of the 

 past, and, thereby, to act intelligently not only in ap- 

 pearance, but in truth. If we possessed a scale of 

 abstractions, we might possibly assign a limit. But 

 who can specify the capability of a dog or a monkey 

 in acquiring general knowledge ? Can a certain animal 

 gather the notion of color in general from the notions 

 of the single colors? or the general notion of the 

 bird from the memory images of various feathered 

 creatures? or is it unable to do so? We do not know, 

 and probably never shall know." 



"This is not the place to treat on the origin of 

 language, but we can justly inquire, whether animals 

 possess anything that can be compared with articulate 

 speech in man. Animals manifest their feelings by 

 spontaneous motion and sound. They utter calls. It 

 is difficult to determine in how far such utterances are 

 the result of unconscious impulse or of rational inten- 

 tion. The latter seems to me not to be so very im- 

 probable, at least in single cases. But be it as it may, 



