AK TICULA TION. 1 27 



considerable a degree brings us to the very borders of the 

 faculty of using words with an intelligent appreciation of their 

 meaning. 



Familiarity with the facts now before us is apt to blunt 

 this their extraordinary significance ; and therefore I invite 

 my opponents to reflect how differently my case would have 

 stood, supposing that none of the lower animals had happened 

 to have been sufficiently intelligent thus to understand the 

 meanings of words. How much greater would then have 

 been the argumentative advantage of any one who undertook 

 to prove the distinctively human prerogative of the Logos. 

 No mere brute, it might have been urged, has ever displayed 

 so much as the first step in approaching to this faculty : from 

 its commencement to its termination the faculty belongs 

 exclusively to mankind. But, as matters actually stand, this 

 cannot be urged : the lower animals share with us the order of 

 ideation which is concerned in the understanding of words — 

 and words, moreover, so definite and particular in meaning 

 as is involved in explaining the particular mesh in a large 

 piece of wire-netting through which it is required that a straw 

 shall be protruded. While watching this most remark- 

 able performance on the part of the chimpanzee, I felt more 

 than ever disposed to agree with the great philologist Gciger, 

 where he says " there is scarceJy a more wonderful relation- 

 ship upon the earth than this accession \i.e. the understanding 

 of words] by the intelligence of animals to that of man."* 



I take it then, as certainly proved, that the germ of the 

 sign-making faculty which is present in the higher animals is 

 so far developed as to enable these animals to understand 

 not merely conventional gestures, but even articulate sounds, 

 irrespective of the tones in which they are uttered. There- 

 fore, in view of this fact, together with the fact previously 

 established that these same animals frequently make use of 

 conventional gesture-signs themselves, I think we are justified 

 in concluding a priori, that if these animals were able to 

 articulate, they would employ simple words to express simple 



• UnpruMg der Sprache, p. 1 23. 



