30 COMPARATIVE PSYCHOLOGY. 



both, the life of the body and the life of intellect, both matter 

 and the mind, and the organism and the faculties,* belong to 

 each one separately. Terms correlative one to the other, never 

 independent. There is an immense space between the intel- 

 lect of animals and that of a civilised European ; we will- 

 ingly recognise this, but encumbered by mean terms and nu- 

 merous transitions ; that these latter exist, or that they have 

 finished their time upon our planet, we also allow. The question 

 of language, so confused, and so full of obscurity, still remains. 



" Whatever resemblance there may be between the Hottentot 

 and the monkey," says Buffon, " the distance which separates 

 them is immense, since internally it is filled by thought and 

 outwardly by speech. "f We know how to consider the first of 

 these appreciations. As to the second, let us see if we shall 

 not there perceive a sort of gradation which would insensibly 

 lead us from our own complicated languages to others of a 

 much greater simplicity, so much so that they can scarcely be 

 called by that name. Speech and language are two words 

 often confounded, but in science we must give to each of them 

 its own value. Speech is a language articulated by the respira- 

 tory channels. Language may be defined as "everything 

 spoken by well known and understood means between two in- 

 tellects." It may be seen that we give the fullest acceptation 

 possible to this word. It is a language that the Abbe de PEpee 

 invented for the deaf and dumb. The writing of this language 

 is another. A phonetic telegram is, as regards a stranger, 

 merely a succession of sounds, like the song of a nightingale ; 

 a naval telegram is only an assemblage and a combination 

 of colours like an arabesque, united the moment when the 

 necessary arrangement forms these sounds or these colours into 

 language, t 



Speech alone being the habitual and natural language of 

 mankind, endowed otherwise with special organic specifica- 



* See 1L Geoffrey Saint-Hilaire, Comptes Rendus des Seances de I' Academic 

 des Sciences, vol. iv, p. 261. 



f See Flourens, Histoire des Travaux de Buffon, 1844, p. 135. Descartes 

 made use of the absence of speech in animals as a strong argument against 

 them. 



J See Gratiolet, Bulletins de la Soc. d' Anthropologie de Paris, 18 April, 1861. 



