REVIEWS. 
521 
from the source of truth ? ” — truths which have therefore no existence for 
the humbler creatures placed under his care and presented to him for his 
purposes. 
If we were to treat our author’s doctrines as he has treated the cautious 
teachings of Mr. Darwin, we should ask him why, in that admirable 
monograph which he published some years since in the Microscopical 
Journal , of an infusorial form, “ Disteria,” he said nothing of its loves or 
of its hates l — for the “ germ” of love should exist even in its microscopical 
bosom ! 
In what “ lower form ” does that faculty germinate which enables man 
to comprehend and admire the harmony of the universe and the wisdom 
of its Maker % 
But the author’s distinctions and designations, when he travels out of 
his own sphere, are most mysterious, and often contradictory. Granted 
that man is the only animal possessing intelligible and rational speech 
(another very decided distinction between him and the lower animals), 
what are we to understand by “ rational ” speech ? Suppose the speech of 
the parrot had been ever so perfect, or that the gorilla had been endowed 
with this attribute ; would it have enabled them to accumulate experience ? 
Or if, on the other hand, these animals had possessed such mental qualities 
as are now the heritage of man only, but no speech, would they not have 
risen in the scale of intelligence? May not, even now, a “ dumb ” animal, 
a cat or an elephant, be taught to perform rational acts, in consequence of 
its possessing certain lower psychical qualities in common with man ? What 
has speech done to render man “ consciously ” intelligent ? what can it have 
done? We would ask the author to say frankly, is it not one of the many 
media through which human reason and human will act ; and according 
to every principle that he has enunciated, is not “rational speech” a 
misnomer ? 
Whichever way he turns he convicts himself of inaccurate reasoning. 
If man’s “rational” speech be something distinct from the utterances of 
the lower animals, and is rendered so by the possession of reason , then 
there is a distinct line of demarcation between them, which cannot be 
bridged over by the discovery of the fossil bones of “ an ape more anthro- 
poid,”* or “ of a man more pithecoid.”f If, on the other hand, man’owes 
his reason to his speech (as the author would have us infer), then whence 
have those animals derived their reasoning faculties, which possess no 
speech, and why are those having imperfect modes of utterance not more 
rational than those which have next to none ? And again we ask, how can 
man through his speech have become “ consciously ” intelligent, whilst all 
his lower companions have remained unconscious of their intelligence ? 
But we will not pay our readers the sorry compliment to suppose that in 
studying this ncosophy, they will not be capable at once of distinguishing 
between facts and well-grounded theories, and accommodating general- 
izations ; and we must repeat, therefore, in somewhat different terms, called 
forth by the appearance of this second work of Professor Huxley’s, our 
reason for thus analyzing his doctrines. 
Man-like. 
t Ape-like. 
