134 MENTAL EVOLUTION IN MAN. 



longer as stereotyped in the framework of special and direct 

 association, but as movable types to be arranged in any 

 order that the meaning before the mind may dictate. When 

 this stage is reached, we have the faculty of predication, or of 

 the grammatical formation of sentences which are no longer 

 of the nature of vocal gestures, dcsignative of particular 

 . objects, qualities, actions, or states of mind : but vehicles for 

 the conveyance of ever-changing thoughts. 



We shall presently sec that this distinction between the 

 naming and the predicating phases of language is of the 

 highest importance in relation to the subject of the present 

 treatise ; but meanwhile all we have to note is that the 

 naming phase of spoken language occurs — in a rudimentary 

 form, indeed, but still unquestionably — in the animal kingdom ; 

 and that the fact of its doing so is not surprising, if we 

 remember that in this stage language is nothing more than 

 vocal gesticulation. Psychologically considered, there is 

 nothing more remarkable in the fact that a bird which is able 

 to utter an articulate sound should learn by association to use 

 that sound as a conventional sign, than there is that it should 

 learn by association similarly to use a muscular action, as it 

 does in the act of depressing its head as a sign to have it 

 scratched. Therefore we may now, I think, take the position 

 as established a posteriori as well as a priori, that it is, so to 

 speak, a mere accident of anatomy that all the higher animals 

 are not able thus far to talk ; and that, if dogs or monkeys 

 were able to do so, we have no reason to doubt that their use 

 of words and phrases would be even more extensive and 

 striking than that which occurs in birds. Or as Professor 

 Huxley observes, " a race of dumb men, deprived of all 

 communication with those who could speak, would be little 

 indeed removed from the brutes. The moral and intellectual 

 differences between them and ourselves would be practically 

 infinite, though the naturalist should not be able to find a 

 single shadow even of specific structural difference.* 



• Man^s Place in Nature, p. 52. I may here appropriately allude to a paper 

 which elicited a good deal of discussion some years ago. It was read before the 



