32 COMPARATIVE PSYCHOLOGY. 



not been revealed this theory does not even deserve the honour 

 of having been opposed by Jacob Grimm.* But we may admit 

 that language is, if not a necessity, a least a direct consequence 

 of an intellect such as existed amongst mankind at the time, 

 whether long or short we know not, which preceded the ap- 

 pearance of language.* " The moment," says M. Eenan, sta- 

 ting the theories of Steinthal,f " that language arises from the 

 human soul and appears in the light of day and constitutes an 

 epoch in the development of the life of the mind, is the mo- 

 ment when intuition is changed into idea. Things appear first 

 to the mind in the complexity of the real, abstraction is un- 

 known to the primitive man." Here, then, are two well-cha- 

 racterised modes, two ways of being, entirely different from the 

 intellect of man. The one, where this intellect only possesses 

 intuition, the other where analysis sees the light, where the 

 mind is abstracted, and where, by a mechanism more or less 

 complicated, but at the same time by a real work,J it ends by 

 calling every abstraction of mind by a name; then he speaks. 

 But before the time when this revolution is accomplished, the 

 state of man is completely comparable to that in which animals 

 are placed. They have caught at certain relations by means of 

 their intelligence, without usually feeling any necessity for ex- 

 plaining them, a relation of a much more elevated order of 

 beings, for it has been truly remarked, and it must not be 

 forgotten, that the capital act of language is to " wish to 

 speak." 



We have seen that certain abstract ideas, by reason of their 

 nature, were so entirely foreign to certain races of men, that 

 their intellects had never wished for a word in order to express 

 them. Well, if other ideas, expressing much more simple re- 

 lations, have escaped animals, there is only, in fact, a gradation 

 corresponding to what we have just said concerning intellec- 



lect is the sister of language." See Rechtenbach, De Sermone Brutorum, 

 1706, p. 2. 



* See De I'Origine du Langage, transl., 1859. 



f De I'Origine du Langage, 1858, p. 31, 



J See Jacob Grimm, De I'Origine du Langage, transl., 1859, p. 29. 



Father Pardies (S. J.), in a work, otherwise of no great value, Discov.rs 

 de la Connaissance des Betes, 1672, p. 39. 



