126 MENTAL EVOLUTION IN MAN. 



Zoologica* Gardens. This ape has learnt from her keeper the 

 meanings of so many words and phrases, that in this respect 

 she resembles a child shortly before it begins to speak. More- 

 over, it is not only particular words and particular phrases 

 which she has thus learnt to understand ; she also understands, 

 to a large extent, the combination of these words and phrases 

 in sentences, so that the keeper is able to explain to the animal 

 what it is that he requests her to do. For example, she will 

 push a straw through any particular meshes in the network of 

 her cage which he may choose successively to indicate by such 

 phrases as — " The one nearest your foot ; now the one next 

 the key-hole ; now the one above the bar," &c., &c. Of 

 course there is no pointing to the places thus verbally desig- 

 nated, nor is any order observed in the designation. The 

 animal understands what is meant by the words alone, and 

 this even when a particular mesh is named by the keeper re- 

 marking to her the accident of its having a piece of straw 

 already hanging through it. 



In connection with the subject of the present treatise it 

 appears to me difficult to overrate the significance of these 

 facts. The more that my opponents maintain the fundamental 

 nature of the connection between speech and thought, the 

 greater becomes the importance of the consideration that the 

 higher animals are able in so surprising a degree to participate 

 with ourselves in the understanding of words. From the ana- 

 logy of the growing child we well know that the understand- 

 ing of words precedes the utterance of them, and therefore 

 that the condition to the attainment of conceptual ideation is 

 given in this higher product of receptual ideation. Surely, 

 then, the fact that not a few among the lower animals 

 (especially elephants, dogs, and monkeys) demonstrably share 

 with the human infant this higher excellence of receptual 

 capacity, is a fact of the largest significance. For it proves at 

 least that these animals share with an infant those qualities of 

 mind, which in the latter are immediately destined to serve as 

 the vehicle for elevating ideation from the receptual to the 

 conceptual sphere : the faculty of understanding words in so 



