REASON AND LANGUAGE. 151 



various other animals. To say, therefore, that brutes 

 "participate with ourselves in the understanding of 

 words " is a false — because ambiguous, and therefore 

 misleading — assertion. We might as truly say that a 

 cat walking over the keys of a piano " participates " with 

 the skilled pianist in " a power of eliciting musical sounds 

 by instrumental agency"! To assert that " participation" 

 which Mr. Romanes asserts, is, once more, to beg the 

 very question his work is professedly devoted to prove. 



We deny the existence of any real analogy between 

 brutes and the growing child, beyond that which 

 necessarily follows from their common " animality," the 

 existence of which we, of course, affirm as strongly as 

 Mr. Romanes does, and the consequences of which we 

 pointed out in our introductory chapter. Words are 

 understood by a child before it speaks, because it 

 already possesses intellect, and the use of significant 

 oral expressions normally and naturally follows. But 

 brutes which are physically able to articulate, do not 

 utter words which they may have associated with ante- 

 cedent sensuous affections as significant expressions, 

 just because they have no veritable understanding power 

 before, during, or after, hearing the words in question. 



Therefore we altogether deny the consequence which 

 (as we have just seen) Mr. Romanes draws — namely, that 

 " the condition to the attainment of conceptual ideation 

 is given in this highest product of receptual ideation." 

 A psychical power of sensuous, consentient apprehension 

 is, of course, in us, a necessary antecedent condition 

 for the attainment of conceptual ideation ; just as is a 

 power of sensation, a sufficient integrity of nervous 



