COMPARATIVE PSYCHOLOGY. 31 



tions in order to produce it, we have been generally led to con- 

 found these two distinct things in speaking of mankind, viz., 

 speech and language. This being allowed, the first question 

 which we have to examine is this, " Has man always possessed 

 the faculty of speech ?" A difficult question, but one which 

 we have no right to proclaim as impossible to be solved, which 

 is, perhaps, not the case, and of which the difficulty belongs 

 principally to the very imperfect knowledge which we possess 

 concerning the distant epoch which saw mankind in his cradle.* 

 Let us first of all remember that man has, in common with 

 animals, voice, cries, natural inflections (M. Flourens), that 

 which we otherwise call natural language. " Like a simple 

 animal," says Herder/)* " man possesses the faculty of speech. 

 All the most violent and painful sensations of his body, as well 

 as the strong passions of his mind, are manifested immediately 

 by cries or inflections of the voice, by natural and inarticulate 

 sounds. The animal which suffers as well as the hero Philoc- 

 tetes when it feels sorrow will moan and sigh, even when 

 abandoned in a desert island, far from the sight of any friendly 

 creature, without any hope of succour." This language is in- 

 telligible between all animals, between animals and ourselves, 

 and between ourselves and animals. We may affirm that man 

 possesses it always, from the first hour of his birth. As to 

 articulated language, as artificial language has been called in 

 opposition to the preceding, the question is much more con- 

 fused and much less clearly defined. 



We think with Steinthal, with Jacob Grimm, J and with M. 

 Renan, that language is not innate in man, that is to say, it 

 is not, as the Buddhist philosophy has already declared, a ne- 

 cessary consequence of active intelligence. || Further, it has 



* See J. Grimm, De I'Origine du Langage, transl., 1859, p. 53. 



f Traite de I' Origine du Langage, Engl. transl., 1827, p. 6. 



J De I'Origine du Langage, transl., 1859. 



De I'Origine du Langage, 2nd edit., 1858. 



|| It is by tracing, according to custom, effects to their causes, that the 

 Buddhist philosophy arrives at the principles of joint responsibility, which, 

 according to it, unites reason to language, making them mutually flow one 

 from the other. " Name and form have as a cause, intellect, and intellect 

 has for a cause, name and form. See Burnouf, Le Lotus de la bonne loi, p. 550. 

 Mercurius Trismegistus, in the Pimander (Pimander, De sapientid et potestate 

 Dei), says almost the same thing: " Speech is the sister of intellect; intel- 



