Chap. XVIIL] POWERS OF HIGHER BRUTES. 331 



About the middle of the last century the celebrated David 

 Hartley wrote* : — '* It is remarkable that Apes, whose 

 bodies resemble the human body more than those of any 

 other brute creature, and whose intellects also approach 

 nearer to ours — which last circumstance may, I suppose, 

 have some connection with the first — should likewise 

 resemble us so much in the faculty of imitation. Their 

 aptness in handling is plainly the result of the shape and 

 make of their fore-legs and their intellects together, as 

 in us. Their peculiar chattering may perhaps be some 

 attempt towards speech, to which they cannot attain, 

 partly from the defect in the organs ; partly, and that 

 chiefly, from the narrowness of their memories, appre- 

 hensions, and associations." 



If the anthropoid Apes, possessing as they do such a 

 well defined basis of Intelligence and Emotion, were 

 endowed with Articulate Speech, so that they might 

 benefit and mutually instruct one another — even merely 

 by oral traditions and communications — how great a pro- 

 gress in the degree and range of their Intelligence might 

 be expected after a few hundred generations had lived 

 under the influence of such conditions. 



* " Observations on Miin," 6tli Ed., 1834, p. 165. 



