Intelligence and Speech. Ill 



And furthermore it is impossible to possess ab- 

 stractions of the first order without the natural inclina- 

 tion to communicate them to other beings of the same 

 kind. But a communication of general notions on the 

 properties of things perceptible to the senses essentially 

 implies the use of language similar to that of man. 

 Why then are dogs and monkeys without it? That 

 they have none, is admitted even by Emery. But we 

 inquire further : why have they none ? We cannot shove 

 this embarrassing question aside by merely referring 

 to the different structure of the larynx in man and in 

 the higher animals. For nothing more would be re- 

 quired of them than a mutual agreement and definite 

 arrangement of their inarticulate sounds as arbitrary 

 signs or symbols of their general concepts and abstrac- 

 tions of the first order. The result would indeed be a 

 rough and disagreeable language, very deficient in 

 words and constructions, still a language similar to that 

 of man. Very many dogs and monkeys are able, as we 

 know, to vary and modulate the sounds they utter ac- 

 cording to various sensile affections of which these 

 sounds are the immediate expressions. What then is 

 wanting to establish a language? It is not the want 

 of sounds, but of the possibility and necessity of mutu- 

 ally combining and intelligently arranging these sounds 

 as arbitrary, conventional signs of their concepts and 

 ideas. If animals really possessed genuine abstractions, 

 even those of "the first order," the possibility and 

 necessity of a language would be the immediate result. 

 Consequently, from the lack of language even in the 

 highest mammal, we can and must infer the lack of 

 intelligence. 



