226 LECTURE VIII. 



question is, tlierefore, disposed of; yet we cannot conceive 

 how so monstrous an assertion can be sustained. 



Quatrefages is more cautious. He says, " Shall we find the 

 characters of the human kingdom in the intellectual capacity? 

 Certainly, the comparison of the mental development of man 

 with the rudimentary intelligence of even the most gifted 

 animals, never suggested itself to me. The interval between 

 brute and man is, in this respect, so great that a perfect differ- 

 ence between them was admissible. But this is no longer 

 tenable. The animal does possess intelhgence ; and though 

 their fundamental capacities are less developed, they neverthe- 

 less exist ; the animal feels, wills, remembers, deliberates, and 

 the correctness of its judgment seems frequently miraculous ; 

 whilst the very errors which the animal commits give evidence 

 that its judgments are not the mere results of a blind and neces- 

 sary impulse. We, moreover, observe great inequalities in the 

 various groups of animals. Thus, among the vertebrata, we 

 see that birds much excel fishes and reptiles, but are much in- 

 ferior to mammals. It would, therefore, not be surprising 

 if, among the latter, we were to find some animal possessing a 

 much higher intelligence ; this would only be a progress, but 

 no fundamentally new phenomenon. 



" What we observe of intelligence in general, applies also 

 to its highest manifestation, — language. Man, it is true, alone 

 possesses articulate language ; but two classes of animals pos- 

 " sess voice. They, like ourselves, produce tones which express 

 feelings and thoughts, and which are not only understood 

 by individuals of the same species, but even by man. The 

 hunter learns quickly to understand what is called the lan- 

 guage of birds and beasts ; nor does it require a long ap- 

 prenticeship to distinguish their sounds of love, passion, pain, 

 or alarm. This kind of language is, no doubt, very ru- 

 dimentary, consisting, it might be said, of mere interjections, 

 but it is sufiicient to establish the mutual relations of these 

 creatures. But does this language difier fundamentally 

 from that of man by the mechanism of its production, its 

 object, and its results ? Anatomy, physiology, and ex- 

 perience teach that it does not ; herCj also, we find a 



