1846.] Characteristics of Animals. 241 



amorphous and unmeaning, or play pantomime with his master's 

 razor by slitting his own weasand across, or affectedly thrum the 

 strings of a violin, ar " spectacle bestrid" gravely chatter over a 

 newspaper, and all without a solitary conception of what he is 

 about beyond the mere ideas of attitude and sound. Where was 

 ever yet seen a cow or a horse upon a terraced bluff ot a castel- 

 lated hilltop, wrapped in the vision of the landscape around? 

 How superlatively ridiculous to recite a chronicle of the Cid in 

 the ears of a troop O'f wild horses, or to harangue a gathering of 

 apes on casuistic loi'e or the moral sublime! 



Another definitive peculiarity as pertaning to man, viewed as 

 a model rather than a formative cause, is language. Elemien- 

 tary sounds indeed, the vocal expressions of emotion, and; what 

 artificial language presupposes for its basis, are appreciable by 

 the mammalia in common. These effect by consonant modula- 

 tions of voice an intercommiunication of sentiments, interchang- 

 ing their joys or imparting to one another their fears. Tlie 

 domesticated species furthermore are soon taught to connect 

 familiar things with names, and to associate with simple phon- 

 etic phraseology, the corresponding acts. TTie parrot hails the 

 wayfaring man with its idle gibberish, associating a successlonal 

 sound with some sensible idea, but unlike the child, it never 

 attains to any appreciation of words in their trar^ferrable re- 

 lations, in respect of subject and predicate, modality of action, 

 time and place. What story-book reader ever mistook the 

 flattering echo of a parroquet for articulative intelligence? Ar- 

 tificial language, the medium of abstract thought, and the ex- 

 ponent of all the complicated generalizations of the mind, and 

 in such view the grandest monument of human skill, presumes 

 a power of analysis immeasurably transcending a mere catena- 

 tion of sounds whether imitative or instinctive. On such grounds, 

 man and the brute stand at as wide a remove as infinity and in- 

 finitesimality. 



The idea of number involves the power of generalization in 

 its most abstract and absolute form, and here a chasm opens, 

 broad as fathomless. The motion in its inmost deCiniteness 



No. VIII. 6 



