79 



between the brain of man and that of the ape, as a proof that 

 the latter possessed the rudiments of speech in an undeveloped 

 form. 



Of all the branches of knowledge, there are none more in- 

 teresting than the study of language. Man shares with animals 

 the power of emitting sounds by means of an apparatus es- 

 pecially adapted for that purpose ; sound being described as a 

 particular movement of ponderable matter capable of affecting 

 the organ of hearing. Man alone, however, possesses the 

 power of regulating and systematizing these sounds, so as to 

 transmit to others the impressions of his mind in the form of a 

 language, which has been described as a sensible phenomenon 

 by which thought becomes materialized. In fact, speech or 

 language consists of a series of conventional sounds, which 

 represent a meaning which the mind has previously attached to 

 their expression. There are two distinct features in speech, — 

 an act of the intelligence, and a sonorous mechanism. These 

 have been termed cognitixe and executive, — thought-speech and 

 spoken-speech ; the internal and external speech of M. 

 Bouillaud. Here I would remark that it is important not to 

 confound the faculty of articulate language with the general 

 faculty of language, and Professor Broca^s remarks on this 

 subject are so lucid and terse that I cannot do better than 

 transcribe them: — "There are several kinds of language; 

 every system of signs which permits the expression of ideas in 

 a manner more or less intelligible, more or less complete, or 

 more or less rapid, is a language in the general sense of the 

 word : thus speech, mimicry, dactylology, writing both hiero- 

 glyphic and phonetic, are so many kinds of language. There 

 is a general faculty of language which presides over all these 

 modes of expression of thought, and which may be defined, 

 the faculty of establishing a constant relation between an idea 

 and a sign, be this sign a sound, a gesture, a figure, or a drawing 

 of any kind.^^ 



Here we must inquire whether language is the exclusive pre- 

 rogative of man ? Some would answer this question in the 

 negative, and M. Lemoine, in a highly philosophical treatise, 

 entitled "La Physiognomie et la Parole,' devotes a chapter to 

 he Langnge des Betes, and a celebrated French anthropologist, 

 M. Coudereau, maintains that man is not alone in possessing a 

 language ; that all species of animals possess one, varied, but 

 sufficient to express their ideas. He further says that " man 

 acquires the faculty of speech by his memory, labour, and 

 imitation,— the parrot does no more. From a linguistic stand- 

 point, this faculty is in its nature identical in man and animals j 



