146 THE ORIGIN OF HUMAN REASON. 



In his next (seventh) chapter Mr. Romanes applies 

 himself to the consideration of articulation. 



He begins by referring, as we have before done,* to 

 the occasional meaningless articulations of idiots, some 

 birds, young children, and certain savages and lunatics. 

 He tells us \ of one of his own children who was very 

 late in beginning to speak, but who " at fourteen and a 

 half months old said once, and only once, * Ego.' " This 

 fact is cited as one instance out of many, to show 

 (what we also affirm) that meaningless articulation is 

 " spontaneous and instinctive, as well as intentionally 

 [and we say, also unintentionally] imitative." He also 

 quotes from Mr. Tylor, to the effect " that even born- 

 mutes, who never heard a word spoken, do of their own 

 accord and without any teaching make vocal sounds more 

 or less articulate, to which they attach a definite meaning, 

 and which, when once made, they go on using afterwards 

 in the same unvarying sense." 



This, we may be told, is simply the result of in- 

 heritance from many generations of speaking ancestors. 

 But we may reply, How about those who first articulated? 

 Why are we not to suppose such actions to have been 

 instinctive ? We know that instinct is a radically dis- 

 tinct faculty,! not to be explained by either lapsed or 

 actual intelligence, or by mere reflex action, but rather 

 as a special modification of that sensori-motor power 

 which we know also exists in us now. How else could 

 the language of gesture have arisen t And if we allow 

 an instinctive activity to primitive gesture, why not also 



* See " On Truth," p. 197. f p. 122. 

 X See ''On Truth," pp. 358-366, 515-518. 



