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lectual and moral faculties by which he is distinguished from the beast.

And

and well-bred horses and dogs.
even if the conscience of dogs has not
unjustly been traced back to the stick, it
may well be asked whether the case is
very different with the lower classes of
man. Those instincts in animals which
refer to the education of their young, to
the care, trouble, and sacrifices on their
behalf, must be considered as the first
germs of higher moral faculties. Here,
as Goethe says, we see indicated in the
animal the bud of what in man becomes
a blossom."

"Against all this," the writer continues, we have now the fact of natural science which can no longer be ignored, viz. that the faculties of beasts differ from those of man in degree only, and not in kind. Voltaire said truly, 'Animals have sensation, imagination, memory, also desires and movements, and yet no one thinks of claiming for them an immaterial soul. Why should we, for our small surplus of these faculties and acts, require such a soul?' So far the panegyrist; in reply to Now the surplus on the side of man is whom I can only say that, without doubtnot indeed so small as Voltaire's rhetoric ing any of the extraordinary accounts of represents it; on the contrary, it is enor- the intellect, the understanding, the caumous. But for all that, it is a plus only, tion, the judgment, the sagacity, acuteit is not something new. Even with ani- ness, cleverness, genius, or even the mals of the lower orders it would take social virtues of animals, the rules of posivolumes, as Darwin says, to describe the tive philosophy forbid us to assert any habits and mental powers of an ant. thing about their instincts or intellectual The same with bees. Nay, it is remarka- | faculties. We may allow ourselves to be ble that the more closely an observer guided by our own fancies or by analogy, watches the life and work of any class and we may guess and assert very plausiof animals, the more he feels inclined bly many things about the inner life of to speak of their understanding. The animals; but however strong our own stories about the memory, the reflection, belief may be, the whole subject is transthe faculties of learning and culture in cendent, i.e. beyond the reach of positive dogs, horses, and elephants are infinite; knowledge. We all admit that, in many and even in so-called wild animals simi- respects, the animal is even superior to lar qualities may be detected. Brehm, man. Who is there but at one time or speaking of birds of prey, says: They other has not sighed for the wings of act after having reflected; they make birds? Who can deny that the muscles plans and carry them out.' The same of the lion are more powerful, those of writer says of thrushes: They perceive the cat more pliant, than ours? Who quickly and judge correctly; they use all can doubt that the eagle possesses a means and ways to protect themselves.' keener vision, the deer a sharper hearing, Those varieties which have grown up in the dog a better scent than man? Who the quiet and undisturbed forests of the has not sometimes envied the bear his North are easily taken in; but experi- fur or the snail its house? Nay, I am ence soon makes them wise, and those quite prepared to go even farther, and if who have once been deceived are not metaphysicians were to tell me that our easily cheated a second time (therein they senses only serve to distract the natural certainly differ from man). Even among intuitions of the soul, that our organs of men, whom they never trust completely, sense are weak, deceptive, limited, and they know well how to distinguish be- that a mollusc, being able to digest withtween the dangerous and the harmless; out a stomach and to live without a brain, they allow the shepherd to approach is a more perfect, certainly a more happy, more nearly than the hunter. In the being than man, I should bow in silence; same sense Darwin speaks of the incredible degree of acuteness, caution, and cleverness on the part of the furry animals of North America, as being chiefly due to the constant snares and wiles of the hunter.

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but I should still appeal to one palpable fact-viz. that whatever animals may do or not do, no animal has ever spoken.

I use this expression advisedly, because as soon as we speak of language, we open the door to all kinds of metaphor "Mr. Darwin tries particularly to show and poetry. If we want to reason corin the higher animals the beginning of rectly, we must define what we mean by moral sentiments also, which he connects language. Now there are two totally diswith their social instincts. A kind of tinct operations which in ordinary parsense of honour and of conscience can lance go by the same name of language, hardly fail to be recognized in nobler but which should be distinguished most

carefully as Emotional and Rational lan- gists and medical men to convince themguage. The power of showing by out-selves that this distinction rests on what ward signs what we feel, or, it may be, even they would admit to be a most solid what we think, is the source of emotional basis. Dr. Hughlings Jackson, in some language, and the recognition of such articles published in the Medical Times emotional signs, or the understanding of and Gazette for December 14 and 21, their purport, is no more than the result 1867, speaking of the disease of a particof memory, a resuscitation of painful ular part of the brain, says: "This disor pleasant impressions connected with ease may induce partial or complete defect such signs. That emotional language is of intellectual language, and not cause certainly shared in common by man and corresponding defect of emotional or interanimals. If a dog barks, that may be a jectional language. The typical patient in sign, according to circumstances, of his this disease misuses words or cannot use being angry or pleased or surprised. words at all, to express his thoughts; Every dog speaks that language, every nor can he express his thoughts by writdog understands it, and other animals ing, or by any signs sufficiently elaborate too, such as cats or sheep, and even to serve instead of vocal or written children, learn it. A cat that has once words; nor can he read books for himbeen frightened or bitten by a barking self. But he can smile, laugh, cry, sing, dog will easily understand the sound, and and employ rudimentary signs of gesticrun away, like any other so-called rational being. The spitting of a cat, again, is a sign of anger, and a dog that has once had his eyes scratched by a cat would not be slow to understand that feline dialect, whenever he hears it in close proximity. The purring of a cat has a very different meaning, and it may be, as we have been told, like the murmuring of a mother to her beloved child. The subject of the emotional language of animals and man is endless, but we must leave it to the pen of the poet rather than of the philosopher.*

ulation. So far as these means of communication serve, therefore, he is able to exhibit his feelings to those around him. He can copy writing placed before him, and, even without the aid of a copy, sign his own name. He understands what is said to him, is capable of being interested in books which are read to him, and remembers incidents and tales. Sometimes he is able to utter a word or words, which he cannot vary, and which he must utter if he speak at all, no matter on what occasion. When excited, he can swear, and even use elaborate formulæ of swearWhat, then, is the difference between ing.* (as, for example, God bless my emotional language and rational lan- life'), which have come by habit to be guage? The very name shows the differ- of only interjectional value. But he ence. Language, such as we speak, is cannot repeat such words and phrases at founded on reason, reason meaning for his own wish or at the desire of others. philosophical purposes the faculty of And as he is able to copy writing, so he forming and handling general concepts; can, when circumstances dictate, as it and as that power manifests itself out- were, to him, give utterance to phrases wardly by articulate language only, we, of more special applicability. Thus a as positive philosophers, have a right to child being in danger of falling, one say that animals, being devoid of the only speechless patient, a woman, was surtangible sign of reason which we know, prised into exclaiming, Take care.' viz. language, may by us be treated as But in this, as in every other case, the irrational beings-irrational, not in the patient remains perfectly incompetent to sense of devoid of observation, shrewd-repeat at pleasure the phrase he has just ness, calculation, presence of mind, used so appropriately, and has so disreasoning in the sense of weighing, or even genius, but simply in the sense of devoid of the power of forming and handling general concepts.

The distinction here made between emotional and rational language may seem fanciful and artificial to those who are not acquainted with the history and origin of language, but they have only to consult the works of modern physiolo

* See Darwin, Descent, vol. i. pp. 53, 54.

tinctly uttered. . . . It would seem that the part of the brain affected in such cases is that which is susceptible of education to language, and which has been after the birth of the patient so educated. The effect of the disease, in relation to speech, is to leave the patient as if he

* Dr. Gairdner, The Function of Articulate Speech, 1866, p. 17.

In another paper Dr. Jackson describes an oath extremely well as "a phrase which emotion has filched from the intellect."

had never been educated at all to language, and had been born without the power of being so educated. The disease in question is an affection of but one side, the left side, of the brain." And again : "Disease of a particular region of the left cerebral hemisphere is followed by a complete or partial loss of power in the naming process, and by consequent inability to speak, even when all the machinery of voice and articulation recognized in anatomy remains unchanged."

be said to share the gift of language in common, and in what sense it would be wrong to say so. Interjections, for instance, which constitute a far more important element in conversation than in literary composition, are emotional language, and they are used by beasts as well as by men, particularly by a man in a passion, or on a low scale of civilization. But there is no language, even among the lowest savages, in which the vast majority of words is not rational. If, therefore, Mr. Darwin (p. 35) says that there are savages who have no abstract terms in their language, he has evidently overlooked the real difference between rational and emotional language. We do not mean by rational language, a language possessing such abstract terms as whiteness, goodness, to have or to be; but any language in which even the most concrete of words are founded on general concepts, and derived from roots expressive of general ideas.

The whole of this subject has of late been very fully examined, as may be seen in Dr. Bateman's book on Aphasia; and though one may feel doubtful as to the minute conclusions which Dr. Broca has drawn from his experiments, so much seems to me established: If a certain portion of the brain on the left side of the anterior lobe happens to be affected by disease, the patient becomes unable to use rational language; while, unless some other mental disease is added to aphasia, he retains the faculty of emo- There is in every language a certain tional language, and of communicat-layer of words which may be called pureing with others by means of signs and gestures.

In saying this, I shall not be suspected, I hope, of admitting that the brain, or any part of the brain, secretes rational language, as the liver secretes bile. My only object in referring to these medical observations and experiments was to show that the distinction between emotional and rational language is not artificial, or of a purely logical character, but is confirmed by the palpable evidence of the brain in its pathological affections. No man of any philosophic culture will look on the brain, or that portion of the brain which interferes with rational language, as the seat of the faculty of speech, as little as we place the faculty of seeing in the eye, or the faculty of hearing in the ear. That without which anything is impossible is not necessarily that by which it is possible. We cannot see without the eye, nor hear without the ear; perhaps we might say, we cannot speak without the third convolution of the left anterior lobe of the brain; but neither can the eye see without us, the ear hear without us, the third convolution of the left anterior lobe of the brain speak without us. To look for the faculty of speech in the brain would, in fact, be hardly less Homeric than to look for the soul in the midriff.

This distinction between emotional and rational language is, however, of great importance, because it enables us to see clearly in what sense man and beast may

ly emotional. It is smaller or larger according to the genius and history of each nation, but it is never quite concealed by the later strata of rational speech. Most interjections, many imitative words, belong to this class. They are perfectly clear in their character and origin, and it could never be maintained that they rest on general concepts. But if we deduct that inorganic stratum, all the rest of language, whether among ourselves or among the lowest barbarians, can be traced back to roots, and every one of these roots is the sign of a general concept. This is the most important discovery of the Science of Language.

Be

Take any word you like, trace it back historically to its most primitive form, and you will find that besides the derivative elements, which can easily be separated, it contains a predicative root, and that in this predicative root rests the connotative power of the word. Why is a stable called a stable? Because it stands. Why is a saddle called a saddle? cause you sit in it. Why is a road called a road? Because we ride on it. Why is heaven called heaven? Because it is heaved on high. In this manner every word, not excluding the commonest terms that must occur in every language, the names for father, mother, brother, sister, hand and foot, &c., have been traced back historically to definite roots, and every one of these roots expresses a general concept. Unless, therefore, Mr. Darwin is

prepared to maintain that there are lan- ' which gave rise to these roots, and which guages which have no names for father I call the Radical Period, forms the fronand mother, for heaven and earth, or only tier - be it broad or narrow — - between such words for those objects as cannot man and beast. be derived from predicative roots, his That period may have been of slow statement that there are languages with- growth, or it may have been an instantaout abstract terms falls to the ground. neous evolution: we do not know. Like Every root is an abstract term, and these the beginnings of all things, the first beroots, in their historical reality, mark a ginnings of language and reason transperiod in the history of the human mind cend the powers of the human under-they mark the beginning of rational standing, nay, the limits of human imagspeech. ination. But after the first step has been What I wish to put before you as clear-made, after the human mind, instead of ly as possible is this, that roots such as being simply distracted by the impresda, to give, stha, to stand, gā, to sing, the sions of the senses, has performed the ancestors of an unnumbered progeny, first act of abstraction, were it only by differ from interjectional or imitative making one and one to be two, everything sounds in exactly the same manner as gen- else in the growth of language becomes eral concepts differ from single impres- as intelligible as the growth of the intelsions. Those, therefore, who still think lect; nay, more so. We still possess, with Hume that general ideas are the we still use, the same materials of lansame things as single impressions, only guage which were first fixed and fashioned fainter, and who look upon this fainting by the rational ancestors of our race. away of single impressions into general These roots, which are in reality our ideas as something that requires no ex- oldest title-deeds as rational beings, still planation, but can be disposed of by a supply the living sap of the millions of metaphor, would probably take the same words scattered over the globe, while no view with regard to the changes of cries trace of them, or anything corresponding and shrieks into roots. Those, on the to them has ever been discovered even contrary, who hold that general concepts, amongst the most advanced of catarrhine even in their lowest form, do not spring apes. spontaneously from a tabula rasa, but recognize the admission of a co-operating Self, would look upon the roots of lan- roots. guage as irrefragable proof of the presence of human workmanship in the very elements of language, as the earliest manifestation of human intellect, of which no trace has ever been discovered in the animal world.

The problem that remains to be solved in our last Lecture is the origin of those

From Blackwood's Magazine.

THE PARISIANS.

BY LORD LYTTON.

BOOK SEVENTH.

CHAPTER I.

It will be seen from these remarks that the controversy which has been carried on for more than two thousand years between those who ascribe to language an cnomatopeic origin, and those who derive language from roots, has a much IT is the first week in the month of ceeper significance than a mere question May 1870. Celebrities are of rapid of scholarship. If the words of our lan- growth in the salons of Paris. Gustave guage could be derived straight from im- Rameau has gained the position for which itative or interjectional sounds, such as he sighed. The journal he edits has inbow wow or pooh pooh, then I should say creased its hold on the public, and his that Hume was right against Kant, and share of the profits has been liberally that Mr. Darwin was right in representing augmented by the secret proprietor. Rathe change of animal into human language meau is acknowledged as a power in litas a mere question of time. If, on the erary circles. And as critics belonging contrary, it is a fact which no scholar to the same clique praise each other in would venture to deny, that, after deduct- Paris, whatever they may do in communiing the purely onomatopoeic portion of ties more rigidly virtuous, his poetry has the dictionary, the real bulk of our lan- been declared by authorities in the press guage is derived from roots, definite in to be superior to that of Alfred de Mustheir form and general in their meaning, set in vigour to that of Victor Hugo in then that period in the history of language refinement; neither of which assertions

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would much, perhaps, shock a cultivated | formerly laid to his charge, to disdain the understanding.

It is true that it (Gustave's poetry) has not gained a wide audience among the public. But with regard to poetry nowadays, there are plenty of persons who say as Dr. Johnson said of the verse of Spratt, I would rather praise it than read."

assaults of party wrath. His old reputation for personal courage and skill in sword and pistol served, indeed, to protect him from such charges as a Parisian journalist does not reply to with his pen. If he created some enemies, he created many more friends, or, at least, partisans and admirers. He only needed fine and imprisonment to become a popular hero.

Rameau joyfully went.

He had a very

natural curiosity to see the contributor whose articles had so mainly insured the sale of the "Sens Commun

At all events, Rameau was courted in gay and brilliant circles, and, following the general example of French littérateurs A few days after he had thus proin fashion, lived well up to the income he claimed himself, Victor de Mauléon received, had a delightful bachelor's who had before kept aloof from Rameau, apartment, furnished with artistic effect, and from salons at which he was likely to spent largely on the adornment of his meet that distinguished minstrel - solicperson, kept a coupé and entertained pro-ited his personal acquaintance, and asked fusely at the Café Anglais and the Maison him to breakfast. Dorée. A reputation that inspired a graver and more unquiet interest had been created by the Vicomte de Mauléon. Recent articles in the "Sens Commun," written under the name of Pierre Firmin, on the discussions on the vexed question of the plébiscite, had given umbrage to the Government, and Rameau had received an intimation that he, as editor, was responsible for the compositions of the contributors to the journal he edited; and that though, so long as Pierre Firmin had kept his caustic spirit within proper bounds, the Government had winked at the evasion of the law which required every political article in a journal to be signed by the real name of its author, it could do so no longer. Pierre Firmin was apparently a nom de plume; if not, his identity must be proved, or Rameau would pay the penalty which his contributor seemed bent on incurring.

In the dark-haired, keen-eyed, welldressed, middle-aged man, with commanding port and courtly address, he failed to recognize any resemblance to the flaxen-wigged, long-coated, be-spectacled, shambling sexagenarian whom he had known as Lebeau. Only now and then a tone of voice struck him as familiar, but he could not recollect where he had heard the voice it resembled. The thought of Lebeau did not occur to him; if it had occurred it would only have struck him as a chance coincidence. Rameau, like most egotists, was rather a dull observer of men. His genius was not objective.

"I trust, Monsieur Rameau," said the Vicomte, as he and his guest were seated at the breakfast-table, "that you are not dissatisfied with the remuneration your eminent services in the journal have received."

"The proprietor, whoever he be, has behaved most liberally," answered Rameau.

Rameau, much alarmed for the journal that might be suspended, and for himself who might be imprisoned, conveyed this information through the publisher to his correspondent Pierre Firmin, and received the next day an article signed Victor de Mauléon, in which the writer proclaimed himself to be one and the "I take that compliment to myself, cher same with Pierre Firmin, and, taking a confrère; for though the expenses of yet bolder tone than he had before as- starting the Sens Commun' and the sumed, dared the Government to attempt caution money lodged were found by a legal measures against him. The Gov- friend of mine, that was as a loan, which ernment was prudent enough to disregard | I have long since repaid, and the properthat haughty bravado, but Victor de ty in the journal is now exclusively mine. Mauléon rose at once into political im- I have to thank you not only for your portance. He had already in his real own brilliant contributions, but for those name and his quiet way established a of the colleagues you secured. Monpopular and respectable place in Parisian sieur Savarin's piquant criticisms were society. But if this revelation created most valuable to us at starting. I regret him enemies whom he had not before to have lost his aid. But as he has set provoked, he was now sufficiently ac-up a new journal of his own, even he has quitted, by tacit consent, of the sins not wit enough to spare for another.

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