I50 THE ORIGIN OF HUMAN REASON 



with the human infant this higher excellence of recep- 

 tual capacity, is a fact of the largest significance. For 

 it proves at least that these animals share with an infant 

 those qualities of mind, which in the latter are imme- 

 diately destined to serve as the vehicle for elevating 

 ideation from the receptual to the conceptual sphere : 

 the faculty of understanding words in so considerable 

 a degree brings us to the very borders of the faculty 

 of using words with an intelligent appreciation of their 

 meaning." 



But Mr. Romanes's opponents who agree with us, by 

 no means maintain the "fundamental nature of the 

 connection between speech and thought," in Mr. 

 Romanes's sense, which is, the dependence of thought 

 on speech. They maintain, indeed, the " fundamental " 

 necessity of the presence of " thought " in whoever uses 

 either words or gestures to express ideas, but they deny 

 the existence of any fundamental connection between 

 thought and articulate utterance. Not only, indeed, do 

 they deny this, but they affirm that there is a funda- 

 mental severance between thought and many articulate 

 utterances ; such as those of parrots, jackdaws, and 

 abnormal human beings, such as talking idiots. They 

 also deny, on the grounds previously stated, *^ the 

 presence of "thought" in that associative, consentient 

 apprehension of words which we meet with in dogs and 



* Because the facts can be well explained by the mere exist- 

 ence of associations between feelings and emotions, and because 

 were brutes thoughtful as to such words, their thoughtfulness 

 would be displayed in other, less equivocal, modes, such as no 

 one (save such persons as the anonymous narrator of the before- 

 cited tale of the cockatoo) pretends they do display it in. 



