They have no more to do with the
ideas they serve to convey than money has with the things that it
serves to buy.
The principle of association, as every one knows, involves that
whenever two things have been associated sufficiently together, the
suggestion of one of them to the mind shall immediately raise a
suggestion of the other. It is in virtue of this principle that
language, as we so call it, exists at all, for the essence of
language consists, as I have said perhaps already too often, in the
fixity with which certain ideas are invariably connected with
certain symbols. But this being so, it is hard to see how we can
deny that the lower animals possess the germs of a highly rude and
unspecialised, but still true language, unless we also deny that
they have any ideas at all; and this I gather is what Professor Max
Muller in a quiet way rather wishes to do. Thus he says, "It is
easy enough to show that animals communicate, but this is a fact
which has never been doubted. Dogs who growl and bark leave no
doubt in the minds of other dogs or cats, or even of man, of what
they mean, but growling and barking are not language, nor do they
even contain the elements of language." {18}
I observe the Professor says that animals communicate without saying
what it is that they communicate. I believe this to have been
because if he said that the lower animals communicate their ideas,
this would be to admit that they have ideas; if so, and if, as they
present every appearance of doing, they can remember, reflect upon,
modify these ideas according to modified surroundings, and
interchange them with one another, how is it possible to deny them
the germs of thought, language, and reason--not to say a good deal
more than the germs? It seems to me that not knowing what else to
say that animals communicated if it was not ideas, and not knowing
what mess he might not get into if he admitted that they had ideas
at all, he thought it safer to omit his accusative case altogether.
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