as 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. From the standpoint of evolution, I cannot understand
by what rule Nature would have worked to develop the emotions,
sensations, and faculties alike in all these various forms, and make
this one exception in the case of speech. It does not seem in keeping
with her laws. From the standpoint of chance, I cannot see why such an
accident might not have occurred at some other point in the scale of
life, or why such anomalies are not more frequent. Man appears to be the
only one. From any point of view we take, it does not seem consistent
with other facts. All other primates think and feel, and live and die
under like conditions and on like terms with man; then why should he
alone possess the gift of speech?

[Sidenote: FACULTY OF THOUGHT]

I confess that such an inference is not evidence, however logical; but I
have many facts to offer in proof that speech is not possessed by man
alone. It is quite difficult to draw the line at any given point between
the process of thought and those phenomena we call emotions. 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;" but we cannot say at what exact point we pass out of one into the
other.

[Sidenote: THE POWER OF REASONING]

To reason is to think methodically and to judge from attending facts.
When a monkey examines the situation and acts in accordance with the
facts, doing a certain thing with the evident purpose of accomplishing a
certain end, in what respect is this not reason? When a monkey remembers
a thing which has passed and anticipates