System of Positive Polity Volume 2

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1875 edition. Excerpt: ...thought can be transmitted by it. The birds, it is true, show us every day wonderful instances of the superior facilities enjoyed by this mode of transmitting feeling. But since it is less spontaneous in its origin, the motive force of society is even more essential to bring it to maturity, than is the case with mimic expression. To assume that the sounds which the different animals utter have made no advance, Would be as unphilosophical as to sup-ancesareeo-i. cla1'even in pose that human speech had been always what it is now. As the animals. we showed in the preceding volume (vol. i. p. 502), every animal race ia really a Great Being more or less abortive, owing to development arrested chiefly under the overpowering weight of Man. If we apply this dominant law to the question before us, we shall find that the utterances of all sorts of animals really arise, like those of man, from the combined efforts of the race, and are gradually brought to perfection in a long course of effort by successive generations and the living members of each generation working together. The limits placed upon this development are caused by the numerous obstacles, especially those of which man is the cause, which stunt the progress of all the animal races. Thus the social point of view must hold so important-a place in the Positive theory of Language, particularly oral, that it must be the basis of any explanation of the language of animals. We may further see the ultimate superiority that Vocal ex-oral ian-pression at length obtains over Mimic, by noticing two qualities sorlfsaii which the former enjoys, the one statical, the other dynamical; though to neither of these is justice usually done. The first consists in the close dependence of.the organs of...