ing to animals we are always groping in
the dark. But the fact remains that the step, whether small or vast, that
leads from the individual to the general, from the concrete to the
abstract, from perceiving (that is, being acted upon) to conceiving,
thinking, speaking, that is, to acting, is for the animal impossible. An
animal might speak, but it cannot; a stone might grow, but it cannot; a
tree might walk, but it cannot. Why not? Because there are natural
boundaries that are apparently easy to pass, and yet impassable. The tree
grows up a tree, the animal an animal, but no farther, just as man never
surpasses the human, and therefore can never think except through
language, which often is very imperfect.

In one sense, therefore, the Horseherd is quite right. The mind is a
development, an eternal, ceaseless development; but when he calls it a
function possessed by all living organisms, even a goose and a chicken, he
goes far beyond the facts. No goose speaks, although it cackles, and
although by cackling it apprised the Romans of the important fact that
their Capitol was in danger. How much a dog could tell us if he could
speak! As if this capacity or incapacity is not as much the result of
intention as every other capacity and incapacity in nature! If we
translate this ability by _facultas_, that is _facilitas_, we need not for
that reason assume in man a faculty, or as the Horseherd calls it, a
phantom, but the thing remains the same. We can speak, and an animal
cannot; we can think, and an animal cannot.

But it must not be supposed that because we deny thought and speech to
animals, we wish to degrade them. Everything that has been told us of the
ingenious tricks of animals, even the most incredible, we shall gladly
believe, only not that _bos locutus est_, or that an actual utterance lies
hidden in the bark of a dog. A man who sees no difference between language
and communication will of course continue to say that a dog speaks, and
explain in how many dialects he barks, when he is hungry, when he wants to
go out with his master, when he hears burglars in the house, or when he
has been whipped and whines. It would be more natural if scientists
confined themselves to facts, without asking for reasons, and primarily to
the great fact that no animal, with the exception of man, speaks, or ever
has spoken. The next duty of the observer is to ask: Why is this? There is
no physical impossibility. A parrot can imitate al