R. L. Garner

“ Could instinct be the guide in such an act?
If man would only pause and calmly view the facts, he would find that he is but a joint heir of Nature; and why not so? From a religious point of view I cannot doubt that the wisdom and mercy of God would bestow alike on all the faculties of speech and reason as their conditions of life require them, and from a scientific point of view I cannot charge the laws of evolution with such disorder. In either case it were a harsh and jarring discord in the great harp of Nature, whether played by the hand of Chance or swept by the fingers of Omniscience. ”

“ MONKEYS SHED TEARSDuring these orations I have observed the little tears standing in the corner of her eyes, which indicated that she herself must have felt what her speech was intended to convey. These little creatures do not shed tears in such abundance as human beings do, but they are real tears, and are doubtless the result of the same causes that move the human eyes to tears.
It has been my experience that these sounds appeal directly to our better feelings. What there is in the sound itself I cannot say, but it touches some chord in the human heart which vibrates in response to it. ”

“ Mickie does not appear to enjoy the sight of himself in the glass. He always looks at it earnestly but doubtfully, and utters a low sound in a kind of undertone, frowns and scowls as though he regarded the new monkey as an intruder. He rarely talks to the image only with this low, muttering sound, and never tries to find it by reaching his hand behind the glass or making any other investigation. Mickie, however, has been very much petted, in consequence of which he is very selfish, just as children become under like treatment. ”

“ The study of biology has revealed many facts which conspire to show that the incipient forms of animal and vegetable life are the same in those two great kingdoms; and parallel with this fact, I think it can be shown that the faculty of expression goes hand in hand with life. And why should not this be the case? From the standpoint of religion, I cannot see why the bounty of God should not be equal to such a gift, nor can I conceive of a more sublime act of universal justice than that all things endowed with thought, however feeble, should be endowed with the power of expressing it. ”

“ It has impressed me with the thought that all our senses are like the strings of some great [Pg 68] harp, each one having a certain tension; so that any sound produced through an emotion would find response in that chord which is in unison with it. Indeed, I have thought that our emotions and sensations may be like the diatonic scale in music, and that the organs through which they act may respond in tones and semitones, and that each multiple of any fundamental tone will affect the chord in unison with it, like the strings upon a musical instrument. ”

“ The faculty of reason, which man has arrogated to himself, is only limited by that dim line which bounds the vital sphere and sheds its rays through all the kingdom of life, from that point where the vital spark first lights the monad, through all the labyrinths of change, to man in the full pride of his divinity, standing upon the threshold of the angelic state. ”

“ They merge into and blend with each other like the colours in light, and in like manner the faculty of speech, receding through the various modes of expression, is for ever lost in the haze and distance of desire. The faculty of reason blends into thought like the water of a bay blends into the open sea; there is nowhere a positive line dividing them. When we are in the midst of one we point to the other, and say, "There it is;" ”

“ If we could free our hands from the manacles of tradition and stand aloof from our prejudices, and look the stern facts in the face, we should be compelled to admit that between man and ape there is such a unity of design, structure and function, that we dare not in the light of reason deny to the ape that rank in Nature to which he is assigned by virtue of these facts. Physiologically, there is no hiatus between man and ape which may not be spanned by such evidence as would be admitted under the strictest rules of interpretation. ”

“ I have found that the little rogue, McGinty, in Central Park does the same thing at times when I go into the cage and attempt to put my hands on him, and especially when he has taken refuge in a corner to nurse his jealousy. While I remain outside the cage, he is so devoted to me that he will scarcely leave me to get something to eat; but when I enter the cage, and reach out my hand toward him, he will shake his little head and utter that peculiar clucking sound. ”

“ He is unwilling to forego that vain belief that he is Nature's idol, and that he is a duplicate of Deity. Held in check by the strong reins of theology and tradition, he has not dared to controvert those dogmas which bear the stamp of error on their face; he dares not turn away from the idols of his own conceit and read the rubrics written in the fossil rocks; he dares not take those proofs which none can counterfeit, and whose authority is not gainsaid; he dares not lay aside the yoke which galls the neck of patience, or breathe the air unblest by some mysterious rite performed in fear. ”

“ When a monkey shows clearly by his actions that he is aware of the relation between cause and effect, and acts in accordance therewith, is it instinct or reason that guides him? If there be a point in the order of Nature where reason became an acquired faculty, it is somewhere far below the plane occupied by monkeys. Their power of reasoning is far inferior to that of man, but not more so than their power of thinking and expression; but a faculty does not lose its identity by reason of its feebleness. ”

“ And at this point I shall digress from my text so far as to say that I have followed the motives of language through the higher planes of life and thence downward to the very sunrise to the vegetable kingdom, and on through the dim twilight across the mineral world to that point where elemental matter is first delivered from the hands of force. Standing upon the elevated plane of human development, it is difficult for man to stoop to the level of those inferior forms from which he is so far removed in all his faculties ”

“ But by a single word of human speech we can express many shades of meaning simply by modulation; but having at our command so many words to qualify our meaning, we lose sight of the value and power of intonation. The difficulty of discerning the delicate shades of meaning imparted by intonation, depends upon the mode of thought, and the simpler this is the keener the power to interpret inflections. One very important fact is that a dog only learns to interpret one sound on one subject at any one time. ”

“ Music expresses emotion by means of sounds, but they are not speech; and even though the sounds which express them may impart a like emotion to the hearer, they are not speech. The sounds which express crying, sighing, or laughter, may indeed be a faint suggestion of speech, since we infer from them the state of the mind attending the emotions which produce them, yet they are not truly speech. To be regarded as speech, the expression must be preceded by consciousness, and the desire to make known to another the sensation by which the expression is actuated. ”

“ To elevate the humbler ranks could not degrade mankind. Whether man is the work of Deity or was evolved by laws of change from primal matter; whether he was made in one specific act or is the last amendment to a million prior types; whether he is the creature of design or accident, the authorship of his being and that of all the forms which roam the broad empire of life must be the same. We are all the effects of one Great Cause, whatever that may be, and that which gave to man the power of speech imparted it to apes ”

“ It is possible, when we become more familiar with the forces of Nature, that we shall find that affinity and repulsion are but the positive and negative poles of the forces which act on matter; that chemical, vegetable and animal activity are based upon the same fundamental causes, and that speech, which is only one form of expression, is the highest product of such an ultimate force, but in all conditions of matter, such forces, either positive or negative, are the ultimate motives of expression. ”

“ There is nothing like 'Fantasy' in modern literature.... It is a work of elfish art, a mosaic of light and love, of right and wrong, of human weakness and strength, and purity and wantonness, pieced together in deft and witching precision. ”

“ I cannot see in what respect the affections of a dog for a kind master differ from those of a child for a kind parent, nor can I see in what respect the sense of fear for a cruel master differs from that of a child for a cruel parent. ”

“ The rules by which we may interpret the sounds of Simian speech are the same as those by which we would interpret human speech. If you should be cast away upon an island inhabited by some strange race of people whose speech was so unlike your own that you could not understand a single word of it, you would watch the actions of those people and see what act they did in connection with any sound they made, and in this way you would gradually learn to associate a certain sound with a certain act, until at last you would be able to understand the sound without seeing the act at all ”

“ SPEECH USUALLY LIMITEDI still regard it as a rule, however, that monkeys do not learn each other's speech, but the rule is not without exceptions. I have observed, and called attention to the fact, that when two monkeys of different species are caged together, that each one will learn to understand the speech of the other, but does not try to speak it as a rule. When he replies at all, it is always in his own vernacular. I wish to impress the fact, that monkeys do not generally carry on a connected conversation. ”

“ It is true we have no letters in our alphabet with which to represent the sounds of their speech, nor have we the phonetic equivalence of their speech in our language; but it is also true that our alphabet does not fully represent or correctly express the entire phonetic range of our own speech; but the fact that our speech is not founded upon the same phonetic basis, or built up into the same phonetic structures, is no reason that their speech is not as truly speech as our own. ”

“ It is not by the exercise of reason that water flows down hill, or that matter obeys the law of gravity; but in the exercise of autonomy, [Pg 196] however feeble may be the motive, reason guides the act. The power of this faculty is measured by the development of others, and there is no point between the two extremes at which reason intercepts life. The degree in which all the powers of sense and faculty are developed determines the horizon of the thing which possesses them. The aggregation of powers to act constitutes life; and the aggregation of powers to guide the action constitutes reason. ”

“ It is reasonable to believe that he has always had this faculty since he was man. If there has ever been a time in the history of his organism when he acquired his being from some progenitor which was not man, he acquired at the same time the faculty of speech, and that progenitor did not impart a thing which he did not have. While it is true that speech, as I have used it, is confined to vocal sounds, other modes of expression have preceded it, and such has been a common faculty inherent through all forms and planes of life. ”

“ The spider monkey is a study worthy of great minds. When shown her image in the glass, she takes her seat on the floor, crosses her legs, and fixes herself as if she expected to spend the day there. She will then look into the glass and utter a low sound, and begin to reach out her long arms in search of the other monkey. It is surprising to see how she will adjust her reach as you change positions with the glass. Of course, as you remove the mirror from her the image is removed accordingly, and she extends or contracts her reach to suit that distance. ”

“ I am aware that many acts performed by Simians are meaningless to them and done without a well-defined motive. The strong physical resemblance between man and ape often causes one to attach more importance to the act than it really justifies. In many cases the same act performed by some other animal less like man would scarcely be noticed. To teach an ape or monkey to eat with knife, fork, cup and spoon, to use a napkin and chair, or such like feats, does not indicate to my mind a high order of reason ”

“ Desire gives rise to a class of thoughts having reference to the sensations which produce them, and such thoughts find expression in such sounds as may suggest supplying the want. As the wants of man have increased with his changing modes of life and thought, his speech has drawn upon the resources of sound to meet those increased demands for expression. It appears only reasonable to me that thought must precede in point of time and order any expression of thought, for thought is the motive of expression, and the expression of thought in oral sounds is speech. ”

“ I concluded that he had been taught to associate this sign with some sound—for instance, "bed" or "go"; but since that time I have found the sign to be almost universal with this species of monkey, and they use the sign to express negation. I have seen them use the sign in response to certain things which were wholly new to them, but where the idea was clear to them and they desired to express dissent. The fact that this sign is common to both man and Simian, I regard as more than a mere coincidence; and I believe that in this sign I have found the psycho-physical basis of expression. ”