ed to know how long I had been gone,
so he pulled out his watch and looked inquiringly. The man at once
slapped himself on the back, and held up the five fingers of one hand, to
say it was five minutes ago. All this was done as rapidly as though it
had been said in words; and my friend, who knew the man well, understood
without a moment's hesitation. Are we to say that this man had no
thought, nor reason, nor language, merely because he had not a single
word of any kind in his head, which I am assured he had not; for, as I
have said, he could not speak with his fingers? Is it possible to deny
that a dialogue--an intelligent conversation--had passed between the two
men? And if conversation, then surely it is technical and pedantic to
deny that all the essential elements of language were present. The signs
and tokens used by this poor fellow were as rude an instrument of
expression, in comparison with ordinary language, as going on one's hands
and knees is in comparison with walking, or as walking compared with
going by train; but it is as great an abuse of words to limit the word
"language" to mere words written or spoken, as it would be to limit the
idea of a locomotive to a railway engine. This may indeed pass in
ordinary conversation, where so much must be suppressed if talk is to be
got through at all, but it is intolerable when we are inquiring about the
relations between thought and words. To do so is to let words become as
it were the masters of thought, on the ground that the fact of their
being only its servants and appendages is so obvious that it is generally
allowed to go without saying.

If all that Professor Max Muller means to say is, that no animal but man
commands an articulate language, with verbs and nouns, or is ever likely
to command one (and I question whether in reality he means much more than
this), no one will differ from him. No dog or elephant has one word for
bread, another for meat, and another for water. Yet, when we watch a cat
or dog dreaming, as they often evidently do, can we doubt that the dream
is accompanied by a mental image of the thing that is dreamed of, much
like what we experience in dreams ourselves, and much doubtless like the
mental images which must have passed through the mind of my deaf and dumb
waiter? If they have mental images in sleep, can we doubt that waking,
also, they picture things before their mind's eyes, and see them much as
we do--too vaguely indeed