I have said nothing about Professor R. L. Garner’s researches into the language of apes, because they have not yet been so far verified and accepted as to make it safe to rely upon them; but when he lays it down that all voluntary sounds are the products of thought, and that, if they convey a meaning to another, they perform the functions of human speech, he says what I believe will commend itself to any unsophisticated mind.  I could have wished, however, that he had not limited himself to sounds, and should have preferred his saying what I doubt not he would readily accept—­I mean, that all symbols or tokens of whatever kind, if voluntarily adopted as such, are the products of thought, and perform the functions of human speech; but I cannot too often remind you that nothing can be considered as fulfilling the conditions of language, except a voluntary application of a recognized token in order to convey a more or less definite meaning, with the intention doubtless of thus purchasing as it were some other desired meaning and consequent sensation.  It is astonishing how closely in this respect money and words resemble one another.  Money indeed may be considered as the most universal and expressive of all languages.  For gold and silver coins are no more money when not in the actual process of being voluntarily used in purchase, than words not so in use are language.  Pounds, shillings and pence are recognized covenanted tokens, the outward and visible signs of an inward and spiritual purchasing power, but till in actual use they are only potential money, as the symbols of language, whatever they may be, are only potential language till they are passing between two minds.  It is the power and will to apply the symbols that alone gives life to money, and as long as these are in abeyance the money is in abeyance also; the coins may be safe in one’s pocket, but they are as dead as a log till they begin to burn in it, and so are our words till they begin to burn within us.

The real question, however, as to the substantial underlying identity between the language of the lower animals and our own, turns upon that other question whether or no, in spite of an immeasurable difference of degree, the thought and reason of man and of the lower animals is essentially the same.  No one will expect a dog to master and express the varied ideas that are incessantly arising in connection with human affairs.  He is a pauper as against a millionaire.  To ask him to do so would be like giving a street-boy sixpence and telling him to go and buy himself a founder’s share in the New River Company.  He would not even know what was meant, and even if he did it would take several millions of sixpences to buy one.