128 MENTAL EVOLUTION IN MAN. 



ideas. I do not say, nor do I think, that they would form 

 propositions ; but it seems to me Httle less than certain that 

 they v/ould use articulate sounds, as they now use natural or 

 conventional tones and gestures, to express such ideas as 

 they now express in either of these ways. For instance, it 

 would involve the exercise of no higher psychical faculty to 

 say the word " Come," than it does to pull at a dress or a 

 coat to convey the same idea ; or to utter the word " Open," 

 instead of mewing in a conventional manner before a closed 

 door; or, yet again, to utter the word " Bone," than to select 

 and carry a card with the word written upon it. If this is 

 so, we must conclude that the only reason why the higher 

 Mammalia do not employ simple words to convey simple 

 ideas, is that which we may term an accidental reason, so far 

 as their psychology is concerned ; it is an anatomical reason, 

 depending merely on the structure of their vocal organs not 

 admitting of articulation.* 



Of course at this point my attention will be called to 

 the case of talking birds ; for it is evident that in them we 

 have the anatomical conditions required for speech, though 

 assuredly occurring at a most unlikely place in the animal 

 series ; and therefore these animals may be properly 



• Some cases are on record of dogs having been taught to articulate. Thus 

 the thoughtful Leibnitz vouches for the fact (which he communicated to the 

 Acadetnie Royale at Paris, and which that body said they would have doubted had 

 it not been observed by so eminent a man), that he had heard a peasant's dog 

 distinctly articulate thirty words, which it had been taught to say by the peasant's 

 son. The Dumfries Journal, January, 1829, mentions a dog as then living in that 

 town, who uttered distinctly the word " William," which was the name of a 

 person to whom he was attached. Again, Colonel Malleiy writes : — " Some recent 

 experiments of Prof. A. Graham Bell, no less eminent from his work in artificial 

 speech than in telephones, shows that animals are more physically capable of 

 pronouncing articulate sounds than has been supposed. He informed the writer 

 that he recently succeeded by manipulation in causing an English terrier to form 

 a number of the sounds of our letters, and particularly brought out from it the 

 words 'How are you, grandmama,' with distinctness." As I believe that the 

 barrier to articulation in dogs is anatomical and not psychological, I regard it as 

 merely a question of observation whether this barrier may not in some cases be 

 partly overcome ; but, as far as the evidence goes, I think it is safer to conclude 

 that the instances mentioned consisted in the animals so modulating the tones of 

 their voices as to resemble the sounds of certain words. 



