OCTOBER 221 



gence except the primitive emotions of fear, anger, 

 ainativeness, and so on ? Man's heritage of flexible 

 lips, an arched palate, and an even palisade of teeth 

 enables him to modulate his vocal sounds with far more 

 delicacy and significance than our sense of hearing 

 enables us to detect in the cries of beast and bird. 

 His vocal equipment is adequate for the expression 

 of his meaning, which expression no doubt exceeds 

 that of a dog in range, variety, and complexity in 

 proportion to his higher intelligence. But one need 

 not go the length of the French cynic in declaring: 

 ' Plus je vois les hommes, plus j'admire les chiens,' and 

 yet credit a dog with being able to communicate 

 vocally to his own kind his considerable range of 

 intelligence. 1 To describe a dog as one of the ' dumb 

 animals/ denying that the sounds it utters have any 

 specific meaning for other dogs, seems as unphilosophic 

 as when the Greeks of old classed all foreigners as 

 ftdpftapoi barbarians that is ' babblers.' 



One is apt to forget that human speech consists of a 

 great deal more than the mere sounding of vowels and 

 consonants. Stress and pitch are indispensable in 

 conversation; in their absence, misunderstanding or 

 uncertainty is inevitable. Dr. Tylor has illustrated the 

 importance of stress that is, emphasis or accent as 

 affecting the sense of any sentence. He takes a simple 

 phrase : ' I never sold you that horse,' and shows how 

 the whole meaning may be altered according to the 



1 It was another Frenchman, Alphonse Karr I think, who thanked 

 Heaven that his dog could not speak, because he felt sure that the 

 animal would bore him to distraction by repeating the same thing 

 over and over again. 



