522 Evolution and Language 
For many years and in many books Max Miiller argued against 
Darwin’s views on evolution on the one ground that thought is im- 
possible without speech; consequently as speech is confined to the 
human race, there is a gulf which cannot be bridged between man 
and all other creatures', On the title-page of his Science of Thought 
he put the two sentences No Reason without Language: No 
Language without Reason. It may be readily admitted that the 
second dictum is true, that no language properly so-called can exist 
without reason. Various birds can learn to repeat words or sentences 
used by their masters or mistresses. In most cases probably the 
birds do not attach their proper meaning to the words they have 
learnt; they repeat them in season and out of season, sometimes 
apparently for their own amusement, generally in the expectation, 
raised by past experience, of being rewarded for their proficiency. 
But even here it is difficult to prove a universal negative, and most 
possessors of such pets would repudiate indignantly the statement 
that the bird did not understand what was said to it, and would also 
contend that in many cases the words which it used were employed 
in their ordinary meaning. The first dictum seems to be inconsistent 
with fact. The case of deaf mutes, such as Laura Bridgeman, who 
became well educated, or the still more extraordinary case of Helen 
Keller, deaf, dumb, and blind, who in spite of these disadvantages 
has learnt not only to reason but to reason better than the average 
of persons possessed of all their senses, goes to show that language 
and reason are not necessarily always in combination. Reason is 
but the conscious adaptation of means to ends, and so defined is a 
faculty which cannot be denied to many of the lower animals. In 
these days when so many books on Animal Intelligence are issued 
from the press, it seems unnecessary to labour the point. Yet none 
of these animals, except by parrot-imitation, makes use of speech, 
because man alone possesses in a sufficient degree of development 
the centres of nervous energy which are required for the working 
of articulation in speech. On this subject much investigation was 
carried on during the last years of Darwin’s life and much more in 
the period since his death. As early as 1861 Broca, following up 
observations made by earlier French writers, located the centre of 
articulate speech in the third left frontal convolution of the brain. 
In 1876 he more definitely fixed the organ of speech in “the posterior 
two-fifths of the third frontal convolution’,” both sides and not merely 
the left. being concerned in speech production. Owing however to 
the greater use by most human beings of the right side of the body, 
1 Some interesting comments on the theory will be found in a lecture on Thought and 
Language in Samuel Butler’s Essays on Life, Art and Science, London, 1908. 
2 Macnamara, Human Speech, p. 197, London, 1908. 
