INTERCOMMUNICATION 203 
the relationships must be rendered explicit. Try to describe 
an ordinary visual scene, or the most commonplace sequence 
of events, and see if you can do so without making clear to the 
mind the relationships involved. The thing is impossible. An 
infant or a dog cannot understand the simplest possible 
description, because the words and suffixes which indicate the 
relationships have no meaning. The words which stand for 
substantive impressions may have suggestive value through 
direct association. The word “cat” or “rats” may have for 
the dog a very definite suggestive value; and hence some 
people fancy that when they say to their dog, “ There is a cat 
in the garden,” the animal understands what they say. But it 
is quite sufficient to suppose that the word “cat ”’ has suggestive 
force, all the rest being for the dog mere surplusage of sound. 
When we talk to our four-footed companions, how much can 
they be said to understand of what we say ? Perhaps a score 
of words have for a dog a definitely suggestive value, each 
associated with some simple object or action. ‘ Out,” “down,” 
“up,” “walk,” “biscuit,” “cat,” “fetch,” and so forth elicit 
appropriate responses. Even with these, tone is more sug- 
gestive than articulation, and in each word the salient feature 
is the chief guide. When I said “ Whisky,” for example, to 
my fox-terrier, he would at once sit up and beg; not because 
his tastes were as depraved as those of his master, but because 
the ask sound, common both to “ whisky” and “ biscuit,” was 
what had for his ears the suggestive value. 
In a paper on the “Speech of Children,” * Mr. 8. 8. 
Buckman exhibits the animal stage in the incipient speech of 
the human infant. We cannot here discuss, still less criticize, 
his paper. One or two examples will serve to illustrate how 
instinctive sounds may serve as the basis for subsequent 
speech. He regards ma as primarily a forcible expression of 
an emotional state. “If the child require attention it makes 
the loudest noise which it can produce; the parting of the 
lips and opening of the mouth to the widest extent while the 
full volume of breath is emitted produces the sound ma.” At 
* Nineteenth Century, May, 1897, pp. 793-807. 
