The Descent of Man

therefore he would fain make thought absolutely
impossible without speech, identifying
the faculty with its instrument. He might just as
reasonably assert that the human hand cannot
act without a tool. With such a doctrine to start
from, he cannot stop short of Max Muller's
worst paradoxes, that an infant (in fans, not
speaking) is not a human being, and that deafmutes
do not become possessed of reason until
they learn to twist their fingers into imitation of
spoken words." Max Muller gives in italics
('Lectures on Mr. Darwin's Philosophy of Language,'
1873, third lecture) this aphorism: "There
is no thought without words, as little as there
are words without thought." What a strange
definition must here be given to the word
thought!) With respect to animals, I have already
endeavoured to shew that they have this
power, at least in a rude and incipient degree.
As far as concerns infants of from ten to eleven
months old, and deaf-mutes, it seems to me
incredible, that they should be able to connect