THE COMMON-SENSE VIEW 157 



forty or fifty of the tribe, who made a great noise 

 and threatened to attack the aggressor. When 

 he presented his fowling-piece, the fearful effects 

 of which they had just witnessed, and appeared 

 perfectly to understand, they retreated. The 

 leader of the troop, however, stood his ground, 

 threatening and chattering furiously. At last, 

 finding threats of no avail, the broken-hearted 

 creature came to the door of the tent and began a 

 lamentable moaning, and by the most expressive 

 signs seemed to beg for the dead body of his 

 beloved. It was given to him. He took it 

 sorrowfully in his arms and bore it away to his 

 expecting companions (10). 



The chattering of monkeys is not, as is vulgarly 

 supposed, meaningless vocalisation. It is language. 

 It is meaningless to human ears for the same 

 reason that the chattering of Frenchmen is mean- 

 ingless to Americans — because human beings are 

 foreigners. The conversation of monkeys is to 

 convey thought. Every species that thinks and 

 feels has means for conveying its thoughts and 

 feelings, and the means for this exchange, whether 

 it be sounds, symbols, gestures, or grimaces, is 

 language. As Wundt somewhere says : * If 

 psychologists of to-day, ignoring all that an 

 animal can express through gestures and sounds, 

 limit the possession of language to human beings, 

 such a conclusion is scarcely less absurd than that 

 of many philosophers of antiquity who regarded 

 the languages of barbarous nations as animal 

 cries.' Mr. Garner, who has so long and so 



