xiv THE CONCEPT y 323 



ligence in which each of these words would give rise to a 

 definite idea which they could combine as %hey followed 

 the story into an intelligible whole. It seems to be this use 

 of the elements of experience as ideas that can be detached 1 

 from the perceptions in which they are first given, and in 

 their detached state brought at will into any sort of com- 

 bination which is the psychological basis of language. 



4. It may serve to make some of these points clearer if 

 we examine the analogies or approaches to language that 

 we find in the animal world. First of all, then, the cries 

 and other sounds made by animals under the influence of 

 various feelings and emotions are significant in two ways. 

 They express the feelings of the animal in the sense of -feeing 

 physiological results, responses produced by or attendant 

 on those feelings. In this sense they are no more and no less 

 expressive than tears or laughter, or the arching of a cat's 

 back, or the stiffening of her hair. But they are also expres- 

 sive in a sense which brings them much closer to language. 

 They are a understood" by other members of the same or it 

 may be of other species, in the sense that they act upon other 

 individuals in a determinate manner, which we may presume 

 moreover to be the manner desired by the animal who 

 utters the sounds. Thus the love call of bird or mam- 

 mal acts as invitation to the opposite sex, the " danger- 

 cluck " of a hen calls the chicks under her wings, and the 

 angry barking of a dog frightens away an intruder. There 

 seems no reason to deny that sounds of this kind are 

 uttered not merely as the reflex effect of the emotional 

 situation, but with intention, as they certainly are uttered 

 with effect. The cries of animals form a true rudimentary 

 language, in so far that they are sounds uttered in order 

 to affect the behaviour of others, and successful in their 

 object. The limitation of this sort of language is that it 

 is concerned with immediate feeling and the appropriate 

 action, expressing the one, and inciting to the other. It 

 is in no way disengaged from the concrete experience of 

 which we have spoken. Its utterances are indeed in a 

 sense " universals." The " danger-cluck," for instance, is 

 a sound uniformly evoked by circumstances differing in- 

 1 Or, as psychologists call them, "free " ideas. 



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