Chap. IL] MENTAL POWERS. 53 



mother to her beloved child, are more expressive than any 

 words. It is not the mere power of articulation that dis- 

 tinguishes man from other animals, for, as every one 

 knows, parrots can talk ; but it is his large power of con- 

 necting definite sounds with definite ideas ; and this ob^dous- 

 ly depends on the development of the mental faculties. 



As Home Tooke, one of the founders of the noble 

 science of philology, observes, language is an art, like 

 brewing or baking ; but writing would have been a much 

 more appropriate simile. It certainly is not a true in- 

 stinct, as every language has to be learned. It differs, 

 however, widely from all ordinary arts, for man has an 

 instinctive tendency to speak, as we see in the babble of 

 our young children ; while no child has an instinctive 

 tendency to brew, bake, or write. Moreover, no philolo- 

 gist now sujjjjoses that any language has been deliberately 

 invented; each has been slowly and unconsciously de- 

 veloped by many steps. The sounds uttered by birds 

 offer in several respects the nearest analogy to language, 

 for all the members of the same species utter the same in- 

 stinctive cries expressive of their emotions ; and all the 

 kinds that have the power of singing exert this power in- 

 stinctively ; but the actual song, and even the call-notes, 

 are learned from their parents or foster-parents. These 

 sounds, as Daines Barrington ^' has proved, " are no more 

 innate than language is in man." The first attempt to 

 sing " may be compared to the imperfect endeavor in a 

 child to babble." The young males continue practising, 

 or, as the bird-catchers say, recording, for ten or eleven 

 months. Their first essays show hardly a rudiment of the 

 future song ; but as they grow older we can perceive what 

 they are aiming at ; and at last they are said " to sing 



33 Hon. Daines Barrington in 'Philosoph. Transactions,' 1773, p. 262. 

 See also Dureau de la Malle, in ' Ann. des Sc. Nat.' 3d series, Zoolog. 

 torn. X. p. 119. 



