Art and Science 



same idea. A cat never purrs when she is 

 angry, nor spits when she is pleased. When 

 she rubs her head against any one affectionately 

 it is her symbol for saying that she is very 

 fond of him, and she expects, and usually 

 finds that it will be understood. If she sees 

 her mistress raise her hand as though to pre- 

 tend to strike her, she knows that it is the 

 symbol her mistress invariably attaches to the 

 idea of sending her away, and as such she 

 accepts it. Granted that the symbols in use 

 among the lower animals are fewer and less 

 highly differentiated than in the case of any 

 known human language, and therefore that 

 animal language is incomparably less subtle 

 and less capable of expressing delicate shades 

 of meaning than our own, these differences 

 are nevertheless only those that exist between 

 highly developed and inchoate language ; they 

 do not involve those that distinguish language 

 from no language. They are the differences 

 between the undifferentiated protoplasm of 

 the amoeba and our own complex organisation ; 

 they are not the differences between life and 

 no life. In animal language as much as in 



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