REASON AND LANGUAGE. 149 



Mennier's " Les Animaux Perfectibles," afford us reason 

 to regard their contents with grave suspicion. Mr. 

 Chambers, Professor Bain, and the late Mr. G. H. Lewes 

 agree as to this tendency to exaggeration, declaring it 

 to be " nearly as impossible to acquire a knowledge of 

 animals from anecdotes, as it would be to obtain a 

 knowledge of human nature from the narratives of 

 parental fondness and friendly partiality," and affirming 

 that the researches of various eminent writers on animal 

 intelligence have been " biassed " by a secret desire 

 to establish the identity of animal and human nature ! 



This " secret desire " goes further still, as Mr. 

 Darwin himself has shown by naively declaring : * "It 

 always pleases me to exalt plants in the organic 

 scale ! " 



Mr. Romanes thinks it difficult to overrate the 

 significance of this power which animals have of asso- 

 ciating actions with sounds. " The more," he tells us,t 

 " my opponents maintain the fundamental nature of the 

 connection between speech and thought, the greater 

 becomes the importance of the consideration that the 

 higher animals are able in so surprising a degree to 

 participate with ourselves in the understanding of 

 worcjs. From the analogy of the growing child we 

 well know that the understanding of words precedes 

 the utterance of them, and therefore that the condition 

 to the attainment of conceptual ideation is given in this 

 higher product of receptual ideation. Surely, then, the 

 fact that not a few among the lower animals (especially 

 elephants, dogs, and monkeys) demonstrably share 



* See " Life and Letters," vol. iii. p. z'h'},' t P- 126. 



