The Speech of Monkeys

From the highest type of human speech to the feeblest hint of expression there is a gradual descent, and at no point between these two extremes can there be drawn a line at which it may be said "here one begins, and here another ends." The same is true of other faculties; and from the vital centre at which matter first receives the touch of life to the circumference of the vital sphere, all powers radiate alike, and there is no point that I can find between that centre and infinity at which some new endowment intercepts the line. Descending the scale of life by long strides, from man to the lowest form of zooids, we cannot designate the point at which a faculty is first imparted to the form which has it, and this truth extends throughout the vital cosmos. [Sidenote: LANGUAGE IN THE VEGETABLE KINGDOM] The line of demarcation which separates the animal and vegetable is but a wavering, blended mezzotint, and the highest forms of vegetable life seem to overlap the lowest forms of animal, so far that no dividing line is positively fixed. The highest types of vegetable seem to have the faculty of expression in a degree corresponding to, and in harmony with, the rest of their organism. I do not mean to say that the impulse under which a plant acts is synonymously with that which prompts the animal, but both appear to be the effect of the same cause.