158 THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS; 



of thought and expression. Speech is the high- 

 est type of language and the most accurate mode 

 of expression, and belongs only to the higher 

 forms of the animal kingdom. It has passed 

 through all inferior horizons coinciding with the 

 mental, moral, and social planes through which 

 man has passed in the course of his evolution. 



Words are the factors of speech and the high- 

 est development of that faculty. A word may be 

 composed of one or more sounds, so articulated 

 as to preclude any interval of time between the 

 utterance of any two of them — as " tune, " in which 

 the sounds appear to overlap and blend into each 

 other. A single word may signify more than a 

 single thing, and sometimes will suggest to the 

 mind a category or group of connected thoughts, 

 as "eat" or "telegraph," and such is the value of 

 many of our words. This is especially true of 

 words which combine two roots ; but such a com- 

 bination is usually found only in the higher types 

 of human speech. But in these higher types 

 words bear such relations to each other that we 

 cannot well convey a complete idea with a single 

 word, and hence it is that in the modes of ex- 

 pression used by man each separate statement 

 consists of two or more words bearing certain re- 



