Though, therefore,
we allow that every movement forward in language must be determined
by an antecedent movement forward in thought, still, unless thought
be accompanied at each point of its evolutions by a corresponding
evolution of language, its further development is arrested."
Man has evolved an articulate language, whereas the lower animals
seem to be without one. Man, therefore, has far outstripped them in
reasoning faculty as well as in power of expression. This, however,
does not bar the communications which the lower animals make to one
another from possessing all the essential characteristics of
language, and, as a matter of fact, wherever we can follow them we
find such communications effectuated by the aid of arbitrary symbols
covenanted upon by the living beings that wish to communicate, and
persistently associated with certain corresponding feelings, states
of mind, or material objects. Human language is nothing more than
this in principle, however much further the principle has been
carried in our own case than in that of the lower animals.
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