286 LANGUAGE IN LOWER MAN. 



Of one of them Gerhardt says, * He has learnt to make 

 sounds. Speak he cannot, but freely expresses his anger and 

 joy.' Of another, 'They tried to make him speak, but 

 could get nothing from him but an angry growl or snarl. 3 A 

 third ' could never be brought to speak. He used to mutter 

 something, but never articulated any word distinctly.' A 

 fourth * could not speak. He could be made to understand 

 signs very well, but would utter sounds like wild animals.' 

 A fifth 'could never be made to speak,' while a sixth 

 ' could not be brought to speak, though it was easy to com- 

 municate with him by signs.* A seventh a case recorded 

 by Colonel Sleeman 'never could understand or utter a 

 word, though he seemed to understand signs.' And Max 

 Miiller, commenting on the histories of wolf-children in 

 India, refers to their speechlessness as a trait common to 

 all. 



On the other hand, there are many idiots, imbeciles, and 

 lunatics that, giving up permanently or for the time their 

 own language, speech their use of words imitate the 

 language, along with the habits, of various wild animals. 

 Thus the victim of spurious hydrophobia, who fancies he has 

 been bitten by a rabid dog, and that so he has been inocu- 

 lated with a dog's propensities, barks, howls, and whines like 

 a dog. 



Those persons who were affected with certain of the epi- 

 demic delusions of the Middle Ages the fourteenth and 

 fifteenth centuries and who. fancied they had been trans- 

 formed into wolves, dogs, horses, cats, lions, cows, sparrows, 

 or cuckoos, imitated the cries or notes of these animals, 

 neighing like horses, mewing like cats, and so on, according 

 to the speciality of their delusion. And, lastly, various 

 simian, pithecoid, or apelike microcephalic idiots are as imi- 

 tative as monkeys, mimicking all man's gestures. 



Verbal language, then, is not innate in man, but ' a 

 diflicult acquisition,' as Grimm calls it, as gradual and 

 difficult in the race as in the individual. 



It may be supposed to constitute a certain linguistic 

 difference between man and other animals that verbal 

 language and the language of facial expression physiogno- 



