S. E. MEZES — MAN AND OTHER ANIMALS. 
25 
some animal was to be discovered and hunted?” “A dog which had lost 
its master runs towards a group of men, by virtue of a general abstract 
idea, which represents the qualities possessed in common with these men 
by his master. He then experiences in succession several less general, 
but still abstract ideas of sensation, until he meets the particular sensa- 
tin which he seeks.” * 
Since general ideas have been abandoned, the most fruitful results 
in this difficult field have followed the investigation of the language, 
and in general of the significant signs, used by men and animals. The 
minutely painstaking observations of .‘Romanes- on this subject clearly 
establish two facts; in the first place, animals use significant signs of 
various kinds, but, in the second, their use of them is notably different 
from man’s employment of them. This latter fact Romanes expresses 
by saying that language is common to men and animals, while speech 
is confined to men. From this point of departure it will be possible, 
I think, to make very close conjectures as to the precise difference be- 
tween the mental equipment of animals and man. For of course signifi- 
cant signs are the outward expressions of mind, and the distinction 
made only opens up a convenient mode of approach to the funda- 
mental question of the mental difference. 
Specifying further the distinction of the last paragraph, language 
involves no more than the use of single words and signs in entire mutual 
isolation, and in obedience to their suggestion through mere association 
by the situations in which animals find themselves, and by the feelings 
these situations arouse; speech, on the other hand, involves the predi- 
cation of the word, or other sign, as such, or at least, as Romanes more 
moderately suggests, the denomination, or calling by name, as such de- 
nomination, of the situation, or of some element in it. In terms that the 
latest* logical discussions will make at once clear and highly significant, 
language is a sign that its possessor has ideas, speech a sign that he 
makes judgments. The following, quoted from Romanes, f will give 
some idea of the evidence available for showing that animals use 
significant signs. “Further, I give an observation of my own on 
one terrier making a gesture sign to another. Terrier A being 
asleep in my house, and terrier B lying on a wall outside, a strange 
dog, C, ran along below the wall on the public road following 
a dogcart. Immediately on seeing C, B jumped off the wall, ran up- 
stairs to where A was asleep, woke him up by poking him with his nose 
in a determined and suggestive manner, which A at once understood as 
a sign; he jumped over the wall and pursued the dog C, although C was 
* Romanes, Mental Evolution in Man, pp. 52 and 54. 
f Loc. cit., p. 100. 
