S. E. MEZES MAN AND OTHER ANIMALS. 
33 
isTow the same considerations are present, and a safe analogy suggests 
the same conclusions regarding the effects produced by effort when it 
first appears and becomes effective in animals, as a glance at the rude 
activities that even primeval man displays, and that are absent in all 
animals, even the highest, will make plain. I refer to speech, thought, 
tool-making and religion. 
We already know that man alone uses speech, and that speech con- 
sists in the employment of signs with the intent to convey meaning.. In- 
deed, this fact is even popularly known. When asked for the difference 
between language and speech, the naive popular answer, unprejudiced 
by theory and unclouded by difficult psychological conceptions, gives it 
in a word — mere language is aimless, as can be seen in the bablings of 
the child, in the incoherent words of the insane that lead nowhere and 
mean nothing, and in the vocal gymnastics of a parrot; while speech 
sticks to the point, and follows up and conveys meaning. This, Ro- 
manes asserts, but as former quotations show, without realizing the 
significance of the assertion, without seeing that to mean something 
and to intend or will it is the same. “So a man means,” he says, “it mat- 
ters not by what system of sighs he expresses his meaning; the distinc- 
tion between him and the brutes consists in his ability to mean a propo- 
sition.” * 
And of course speech involves much more besides; and especially it 
involves thinking. For thinking, as contrasted with reverie, consists 
in control of one’s thoughts; it is intellectual activity that at least aims 
at holding one’s thoughts to the subject under consideration, and see- 
ing to it that the topic is developed logically; to lose control of one’s 
thoughts is to sink into a state of aimless dreaming that will shade into 
slumber if allowed to continue. But for control of thoughts speech is 
indispensable. As well try to grasp and arrange into system and logical 
coherency the clouds or the impalpable air itself, as attempt to control 
the vague and shapeless thoughts that pass through the mind. They 
are like the snowflakes that disappear in the hand that grasps them. 
But words are quite different. Through the apparatus for articulation, 
they can be controlled as one’s hand is, by muscles that in turn are con- 
trolled by the brain; and, since words have thoughts connected with 
them, these latter are controlled by means of the former. 
Accordingly, in the train of effort and the control it gives, there 
comes not only speech with the opportunity to converse, discuss, and 
thus to avail of the ideas of others, but also the power of intelligent or 
purposeful thinking and reflection, of deliberation, deliberateness, cau- 
* Loc. cit. p. 164. 
