and banished to wild, desert,
usually restricted regions, whither, miserable and restless, they
are incessantly constrained to fly and hide themselves. In this
situation these animals no longer contract new needs, they acquire
no new ideas; they have but a small number of them, and it is always
the same ones which occupy their attention, and among these ideas
there are very few which they have need of communicating to the
other individuals of their species. There are, then, only very few
different _signs_ which they employ among their fellows, so that
some movements of the body or of certain of its parts, certain
hisses and cries raised by the simple inflexions of the voice,
suffice them.

"On the contrary, the individuals of the dominant race already
mentioned, having had need of multiplying the _signs_ for the rapid
communication of their ideas, now become more and more numerous,
and, no longer contented either with pantomimic signs or possible
inflexions of their voice to represent this multitude of signs now
become necessary, would succeed by different efforts in forming
_articulated sounds_: at first they would use only a small number,
conjointly with the inflexions of their voice; as the result they
would multiply, vary, and perfect them, according to their
increasing necessities, and according as they would be more
accustomed to produce them. Indeed, the habitual exercise of their
throat, their tongue, and their lips to make articulate sounds, will
have eminently developed in them this faculty.

"Hence for this particular race the origin of the wonderful power of
_speech_; and as the distance between the regions where the
individuals composing it would be spread would favor the corruption
of the signs fitted to express each idea, from this arose the origin
of languages, which must be everywhere diversified.

"Then in this respect necessities alone would have accomplished
everything; they would give origin to efforts; and the organs fitted
for the articulation of sounds would be developed by their habitual
use.

"Such would be the reflections which might be made if man,
considered here as the preeminent race in question, were
distinguished from the animals only by his physical characters, and
if his origin were not different from theirs."

This is certainly, for the time it was written, an original,
comprehensive, and bold attempt at