SECT. I.] MAN AND BRUTE. 273 



nations possess a language with a more or less regular gram- 

 matical structure. Though it be more than probable that 

 animals possess some means of intercommunication, their per- 

 formances in this respect have only a very distant resemblance 

 to language. Nature has limited most of them to the produc- 

 tion of but few sounds and gestures. 



Deficient in ideas, animals can only give expression as re- 

 gards their concrete condition. Human language presupposes 

 not merely definite individual conceptions of separate qualities, 

 but of their relations to each other, so to say, an articulation 

 of ideas by which alone a designation by grammatical forms 

 becomes possible. However low a language may be in its 

 development, it could neither express thoughts nor render 

 them intelligible, if in the ideal world of the speaker, as well 

 as in that of the listener, such a regulation of thought did not 

 exist ; and this is one of the proofs that the psychical condition 

 of man, however uncultivated he may be, is specifically dif- 

 ferent from that of the brute. But inasmuch as the possession 

 of a language of regular grammatical structure forms a fixed 

 barrier between man and the brute, it establishes at the same 

 time a near relationship between all peoples in psychical re- 

 spects, agreeing as they do in the most essential peculiarity of 

 intellectual life, namely, in the power of arranging the rela- 

 tions of substantive separate ideas so as to give them a definite 

 oral expression. In the presence of this common feature of 

 the human mind, all other differences lose their importance, 

 and make us more inclined to consider them as merely differ- 

 ences in degree ; the more so as there are peoples who, despite 

 their mental degradation, possess a language by no means 

 undeveloped as regards grammatical structure. We agree, 

 therefore, with Pott, 1 ' ' If theology feared that an original dif- 

 ference of language, which linguists assume, would involve 

 the original unity of the human species (which by no means 

 follows), the science of language restores to theology the psy- 

 chical unity of mankind, compared with which the physical 

 unity must yield in importance." 



1 " Von der Ungleichh. menschl. Eassen," p. 243. 



