REASON AND DIVERS TONGUES. 273 



whence, by the help of the '' beggarly elements " sup- 

 plied by the senses, the loftiest concepts spring forth, 

 Minerva-like, armed with the sharp spear of intellectual 

 perception and swathed in the ample mantle of signs, 

 woven of the warp of matter and the woof of thought. 



It is this power of metaphor-making which most 

 plainly displays to us the intellect actually at work, 

 evolving ever new external expressions for freshly 

 arising internal perceptions. Metaphor belongs to man 

 alone. It is the especial privilege and sign of his 

 nature. Not the highest brute — no elephant, no chim- 

 panzee — could ever evolve a metaphor. 



That a higher meaning must be latent in terms 

 which Mr. Romanes would regard as exclusively sen- 

 suous, is made especially evident by ethical propositions. 

 He tells us that such propositions are made up of terms 

 no one of which is itself ethical. We would ask him 

 then : What do you understand by an ethical proposi- 

 tion itself when fully evolved } Do you deny that you 

 can understand by it any ethical conception at all .? If 

 so, you deny that there is any distinction between right 

 and wrong, and if you deny that you have any such 

 perception now, no wonder you deny that early man 

 had any perception of the kind. If, on the other hand, 

 you affirm that you can understand such a fully evolved 

 ethical proposition, whence did its meaning come ? It 

 must have been put into it by some irrational agency or 

 by man himself If the former, then we have a positive 

 deification of unreason. If the latter, then clearly man 

 must be different in nature and essence from any and 

 every brute whatever. 



T 



