RELATION OF TOXE AND GESTURE TO WORDS. 1 57 



shown to obtain among birds. If any existing species of 

 anthropoid ape had proved itself capable of imitating articulate 

 sounds, there might have been a little more force in the 

 apparent difficulty ; though even in that case the argument 

 would not have been so strong as in the above parallel with 

 regard to the great exception furnished by bats in the matter 

 of flight. 



So far, then, as we have yet gone, I do not anticipate that 

 opponents will find it prudent to take a stand. Seeing that 

 monkeys use their voices more freely than any other animals 

 in the way of intentionally expressive intonation ; that all the 

 higher animals make use of gesture signs ; that denotative 

 words are (psychologically considered) nothing more than 

 vocal gestures ; that, if there is any psychological interval 

 between simple gesticulation and denotative articulation, the 

 interval is demonstrably bridged in the case alike of talking 

 birds, infants, and idiots ; — seeing all these things, it is 

 evident that opponents of the doctrine of mental evolution 

 must take their stand, not on the faculty of articulation, but 

 on that of speech. They must maintain that the mere 

 power of using denotative words implies no real advance 

 upon the power of using denotative gestures ; that it there- 

 fore establishes nothing to prove the possibility, or even the 

 probability, of articulation arising out of gesticulation ; that 

 their position can only be attacked by showing how a sign- 

 making faculty, whether expressed in gesticulation or in 

 articulation, can have become developed into the faculty 

 of predication ; that, in short, the fortress of their argument 

 consists, not in the power which man displays of using denota- 

 tive words, but in his power of constructing predicative 

 propositions. This central position, therefore, we must next 

 attack. Hut, before doing so, I will close the present chapter 

 by clearly defining the exact meanings of certain terms as 

 they will afterwards be used by me. 



By the indicative stage of language, or sign-making. I 

 will understand the earliest stage that is exhibited by 

 intentional sign-making. This stage corresponds to the 



