hoate language; they do not involve those that
distinguish language from no language. They are the differences between
the undifferentiated protoplasm of the amoeba and our own complex
organisation; they are not the differences between life and no life. In
animal language as much as in human there is a mind intentionally making
use of a symbol accepted by another mind as invariably attached to a
certain idea, in order to produce that idea in the mind which it is
desired to affect--more briefly, there is a sayer, a sayee, and a
covenanted symbol designedly applied. Our own speech is vertebrated and
articulated by means of nouns, verbs, and the rules of grammar. A dog's
speech is invertebrate, but I do not see how it is possible to deny that
it possesses all the essential elements of language.

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 recognised 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
recognised 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 langu