REASON AND DIVERS TONGUES. 261 



knocked his head, ran to his father. On being asked 

 where he was hurt, "he immediately touched the part 

 of his head in question." " Now, will it be said," he asks, 

 " that in doing this the child was predicating the seat 

 of injury? " We reply, most unquestionably it was. The 

 predication was of a rudimentary kind ; but our 

 knowledge of the nature of children from their growth 

 and development, makes us perfectly clear that it really 

 was a predication. Then, says Mr. Romanes, there is 

 no essential difference between men and brutes, for " the 

 gesture-signs which are so abundantly employed by the 

 lower animals would then also require to be regarded as 

 predicatory, seeing that . . . they differ in no respect 

 from those of the speechless infant." This assertion we 

 hold to be untenable, for our knowledge of the growth and 

 development of animals makes it clear that apparently 

 significant movements * made by them (as when a cat 

 has a bone fixed between its back teeth) are not really 

 a predication. No gestures of brutes need be taken as 

 being assertions about facts, since they are all otherwise 

 explicable. Could they, once more, make gestures due 

 to a real, conscious memory and intention similar to that 

 of Mr. Romanes's child, they would soon make us quite 

 certain of their power in this respect. If they could do 

 it at all they would do it repeatedly and whenever they 

 had need to make their meaning known to other 

 conscious intelligences. Thus Mr. Romanes's opponents, 

 in allowing the quality of predication not only to 

 sentence-words, but to mere manual signs also, in no 

 way thereby impair the full force of the essential 

 • See " On Truth," p. 355. 



