NATURE OF SPEECH I 3 



in the animal economy is speech. It is true that the 

 vocabularies of animals, when compared with those of man, 

 are very limited ; but the former are none the less real. 

 The conception in the mind of an animal may not be so 

 vivid as it is in the human mind, but the same conception 

 is not always equally clear in two human minds. The fact 

 of its being vague does not lessen its reality. 



Expression is the materialized form of thought, and 

 speech is one mode of expression. Every animal is capa- 

 ble of expressing any thought that he is capable of con- 

 ceiving, and such expression will be found to be as distinct 

 as the thought which it expresses. It is inconsistent with 

 every view of nature to suppose that any creature is 

 endowed with the faculty of thought and forbidden the 

 means of expressing it. 



It is true that there are some oral sounds which express 

 emotion — such as pain or pleasure. These may not 

 properly be called speech, although from them we may 

 infer the state of mind attending them ; but while they are 

 not truly speech, they appear to be the cytula from which 

 speech is developed. While emotions are not voluntary, 

 they do not exist apart from mind. They are produced 

 by external causes, and the line of demarcation which 

 separates them from more definite forms of thought is a 

 vague and wavering one. Thought may be involuntary, 

 but expression arises from desire, and this is the sole 

 motive of speech. 



It is not the purpose of this work to discuss the prob- 

 lems of psychology, except to state the grounds upon 

 which we base the claim that animals possess the faculty 



