200 THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS. 



thence downward to the very sunrise — to the veg- 

 etable kingdom, and on through the dim twilight 

 across the mineral world to that point where ele- 

 mental matter is first delivered from the hands 

 of force. Standing upon the elevated plane of 

 human development, it is difficult for man to 

 stoop to the level of those inferior forms from 

 which he is so far removed in all his faculties ; 

 but if his senses could be made so delicate as to 

 discern the facts, he would find perhaps that in 

 the polity of life all horizons are equi-distant 

 from each other. But looking back from where 

 he stands, his powers fail to reach the real point 

 of vital force at which all life began, and his con- 

 tracted senses bring the vanishing-point of this 

 perspective far into the foreground of the facts. 



From the highest type of human speech to the 

 feeblest hint of expression there is a gradual de- 

 scent, and at no point between these two ex- 

 tremes can there be drawn a line at which it may 

 be said : " Here one begins and here another 

 ends." The. same is true of other faculties, and 

 from the vital centre at which matter first re- 

 ceives the touch of life to the circumference of 

 the vital sphere, all powers radiate alike, and 

 there is no point that I can find between that 



