522 Evolution and Language 



For many years and in many books Max Miiller argued against 

 Darwin's views on evolution on the one ground that thought is im- 

 possible without speech ; consequently as speech is confined to the 

 human race, there is a gulf which cannot be bridged between man 

 and all other creatures 1 . On the title-page of his Science of Thought 

 he put the two sentences No Reason without Language: No 

 Language ivithout Reason. It may be readily admitted that the 

 second dictum is true, that no language properly so-called can exist 

 without reason. Various birds can learn to repeat words or sentences 

 used by their masters or mistresses. In most cases probably the 

 birds do not attach their proper meaning to the words they have 

 learnt; they repeat them in season and out of season, sometimes 

 apparently for their own amusement, generally in the expectation, 

 raised by past experience, of being rewarded for their proficiency. 

 But even here it is difficult to prove a universal negative, and most 

 possessors of such pets would repudiate indignantly the statement 

 that the bird did not understand what was said to it, and would also 

 contend that in many cases the words which it used were employed 

 in their ordinary meaning. The first dictum seems to be inconsistent 

 with fact. The case of deaf mutes, such as Laura Bridgeman, who 

 became well educated, or the still more extraordinary case of Helen 

 Keller, deaf, dumb, and blind, who in spite of these disadvantages 

 has learnt not only to reason but to reason better than the average 

 of persons possessed of all their senses, goes to show that language 

 and reason are not necessarily always in combination. Reason is 

 but the conscious adaptation of means to ends, and so defined is a 

 faculty which cannot be denied to many of the lower animals. In 

 these days when so many books on Animal Intelligence are issued 

 from the press, it seems unnecessary to labour the point. Yet none 

 of these animals, except by parrot-imitation, makes use of speech, 

 because man alone possesses in a sufficient degree of development 

 the centres of nervous energy which are required for the working 

 of articulation in speech. On this subject much investigation was 

 carried on during the last years of Darwin's life and much more in 

 the period since his death. As early as 1861 Broca, following up 

 observations made by earlier French writers, located the centre of 

 articulate speech in the third left frontal convolution of the brain. 

 In 1876 he more definitely fixed the organ of speech in "the posterior 

 two-fifths of the third frontal convolution 2 ,'' both sides and not merely 

 the left being concerned in speech production. Owing however to 

 the greater use by most human beings of the right side of the body, 



1 Some interesting comments on the theory will be found in a lecture on Thought and 

 Language in Samuel Butler's Essays on Life, Art and Science, London, 1908. 



2 Macnamara, Human Speech, p. 197, London, 1908. 



