REASON AND PRIM IT I VE MAN. 291 



no irrational bodily movements could generate intellect, 

 nor could mere consentience cause " a further develop- 

 ment " of signs, since, as we have seen,* in order that a 

 sign should even exist, true intelligence -must be already- 

 present. We have here presented to us the interaction 

 of merely sensuous faculties under the misleading terms, 

 " receptual intelligence " and ^' signs," with an implied 

 supersensuous result. Thus is intellect again silently 

 " slipped in," and when once it has been so smuggled in 

 unnoticed, it is, of course, easy enough to explain any 

 subsequent progress by it. If once an ape in some 

 mysterious way became (like a child) potentially a 

 man, any one can see how human characteristics would 

 thereafter become manifest in it. Only thus can we 

 rationally say (as Mr. Romanes says) that the animal's 

 intelligence " must have advanced." 



As to Noire's hypothesis, we think, with Mr. 

 Romanes,! that it can at best be considered but a 

 branch of the onomatopoetic theory ; but we think it 

 most improbable that it contains any measure of truth, 

 or that it was " one among many other ways in which, 

 during many ages, many communities of vociferous 

 though hitherto speechless men may have slowly evolved 

 the act of making articulate signs." 



Mr. Romanes says that his hypothesis will probably 

 be objected to on the ground that it amounts to ^ petitio 

 principii — as, in fact, it does ; and this, we hope, has been 

 made sufficiently clear. He further observes : " The 

 question has been raised expressly and exclusively on 

 the faculty of conceptual speech, and it is conceded that 

 * See above; pp. 65, 122, 128. t p. 381. 



