172 THE ORIGIN OF HUMAN REASON 



made much psychological advance upon the anthropoid 

 apes " ! 



We have no desire to quarrel with Mr. Romanes's 

 further contention that gesture may aid speech, and 

 speech give a higher degree of perfection and distinct- 

 ness to gesture. Nevertheless, it is also true (as we 

 have already remarked) that speech may starve gesture, 

 and also elaborate gesture may diminish the fulness 

 of speech. There appears, therefore, to be here no 

 certain foundation whereon to build an a priori struc- 

 ture of inferences. But whether gesture favours or mars 

 the development of speech, it is certain the latter could 

 never have been originated by it. There must have 

 been an innate, spontaneous tendency to articulate, or 

 articulation could never have taken place. Our author, 

 moreover, always writes as if mere motions by them- 

 selves could generate thoughts, yet nothing but thought 

 already existing could ever generate those intentionally 

 significant motions (gestures) whereby ideas can be 

 readily expressed and easily understood. 



Mr. Romanes next endeavours to meet the very ob- 

 vious difficulty that, had reason and language the simple 

 and accidental origin he assigns them, we ought to find 

 other animals plainly on the road to reach the high 

 level which man has obtained, and we ought not to find 

 that great gulf which all parties admit actually exists 

 between the speaking man and the dumb brute. He 

 tries to do away with this objection by appealing * to 

 what he calls " a fair analogy "■ — that of flight. He 

 says, " Flying is no doubt a very useful faculty to all 



* p. 156. 



