above all others, I do not stand alone. Nearly all men of note
among the learned, as well as others, both in ancient and modern
times, have signified their preference for the Cat in the strongest
terms. Mahomet almost worshipped the Cat, and declared that his own
should have a prominent place in his heaven. Richelieu possessed a
house full of Cats, with twenty favorites, whom he cherished with
great care and fed with his own hands. Shakespeare, Milton, Byron,
Moore, Talleyrand, Edgar Allen Poe, Chateaubriand, Robert Southey,
Dr. Johnson, Benjamin Franklin, Julius Caesar, Thomas Gray, Sir
Isaac Newton, Sir Walter Raleigh, Cardinal Wolsey, Rousseau, Lord
Chesterfield, Whittington, Lord Mayor of London, Plutarch, and
thousands of others, have expressed their admiration of my favorite.
Ancient history tells us of more than one nation that sainted the
Cat, while others still hold the animal in high veneration. Certainly
it must be admitted that the Cat possesses some wonderful attributes
the evidence of which prompts its distinction. I claim for the Cat
a higher order of intellect than exists in any other animal. While
I love the dog, and claim for him a greater degree of intelligence
than may be accorded to the horse, I class the Cat and the dog to be
as distinct in their individuality and with as much difference as
you see existing between man and woman. The organism of the Cat is
of a very delicate nature, and, therefore, more susceptible to all
influences. They are quicker of perception than any other animal,
and, therefore, they more readily acquire knowledge.
By an extended series of experiments I have demonstrated this fact,
and would give the results of my labor were I not positive that my
readers have made a comparison of the dog and the Cat, and arrived at
the same conclusion without anything more than a casual observation.
In experimenting, however, my attention was directed with more
particularity to the manner of communication of ideas between Cats,
and what was my surprise to discover that they have a language of
their own, embracing not only words but, in a large degree, signs.
You may the better understand me when I call attention to the fact
that there are few words, comparatively, in the French language, but
there is, among Frenchmen, a sign language; as, for instance, there
is no word to express the meaning of our shrug of the shoulders and
the extending of the hand and forearms. Words cannot express the
feelings of the heart when men and women of every nativity bow their
heads before their God. Because of this predominance of signs in the
language of the Cat, it will be difficult for me to describe their
mode of idea-communication; but I will make the attempt, and endeavor
to bring it as clearly as possible to your minds, in order that you
may comprehend it as distinctly as it presents itself to mine.
XI.
SIGNS AND SOUNDS.
Language signifies the expression of ideas by sounds and by certain
articulate sounds which are used as the signs or the ideas, sounds
being regarded as mere aids and of secondary importance to signs,
which are, primarily, of the greatest importance in language.
By articulate sounds I mean those modulations of the simple voice or
of sounds emitted from the thorax, formed by means of the mouth and
its several organs, namely, the teeth, the tongue and the palate.
When we give a name to anything harsh or boisterous we, of course,
use a harsh or boisterous sound, the better to describe our meaning.
By the use of such words as express such sounds we convey the ideas
intended to be expressed. It is purely natural to imitate, by the
sound of the voice, the quality of the sound or noise which any
external object makes, and to form its name accordingly. In every
language will be found a multitude of words constructed upon this
principle. We call a certain bird a cuckoo because of the peculiar
sound which he emits. Regard the fact that in English one kind of
bird is said to "whistle," another to "chirp," a serpent to "hiss,"
a fly to "buzz," a bee to "hum," falling timber to "crash," a stream
to "flow," hail to "rattle," rain to "patter," a bell to "tinkle" or
"jingle," or "toll," or to "clash" with another, a board to "creak,"
thunder to "roll," lightning to "flash" and a cataract to "roar." In
these instances the analogy between the word and the thing expressed
is most plainly discernible to the ear. Notice, also, if you please,
that in the names of objects which address the sight only, when
neither noise nor motion are concerned, and still more in the term
applied to moral ideas, this analogy appears to fail. This shows a
superiority of signs over sounds, and is one reason for according to
signs, over sounds, a primary importance. I have noticed, however,
that many learned men have been of the opinion that though in such
cases the meaning becomes more obscure, yet it is not altogether
lost, but that throughout the radical words of all languages there
may be traced some degree of correspondence with the object signified.
Perhaps no language is so peculiar a mixture as your own, by which
I mean the English, which is neither pure nor indigenous. The rule
applies to other languages to a far less degree, but still it
applies. As the multitude of names increases in every nation and
the immense field of language is filled up--if it ever gets filled
up--words by the thousands, fanciful and irregular methods of
derivation and composition, come to deviate widely from the primitive
character of their roots and lose all analogy or resemblance to sound
in the thing signified. It is in such a heterogeneous state that we
find words of sound-signs in language.
Nature taught the members of the animal kingdom to communicate
their feelings, one to another, by those expressive cries and
gestures which are so descriptive. Afterward, names of objects were
invented by slow degrees, in aid of signs. This mode of speaking by
natural signs could not be all at once applied, for language, in
its infancy, must have been extremely crude, and there certainly
was a period in the history of all rude nations when conversation
was carried on by the use of a very few words, intermixed with a
multitude of exclamations and earnest gestures significant of the
meaning intended to be conveyed.
In the early days, the small stock of words which were in use,
rendered signs absolutely necessary for explaining the conceptions
and rude, uncultivated beings, not having signs at hand, with the
few words which they knew it was naturally labor to make themselves
understood by varying their tones of voice and accompanying their
voices with the most significant gesticulations they could make.
The primitive search was for signs and sounds which bore an analogy
to the thing signified. The pronunciation of the earliest sounds
of the languages was accompanied with more gesticulations and with
more and greater inflections of the voice than we now use. Certainly
there was more action in it, and it was conducted upon more of a
crying or a singing tone. Necessity first gave rise to this primitive
yet admirable way of speaking, and it may be said of it that it was
action explanatory of meaning.
Inflections of voice are so natural that to some nations it has
appeared easier to express different ideas by varying the tones in
which they pronounce the same word than to contrive words for all
of their ideas. I instance the Chinese in particular. The number of
words in their language is not great, but in speaking they vary each
of their words by not less than five different tones, by which they
make the same word signify five different things. This gives the
appearance of singing, or music, to their speech, so noticeable in
their conversation, for these inflections of voice, which, in the
infancy of language, were no more than harsh or disconsonant cries,
must, as language gradually becomes more polished, pass into smoother
and more musical sounds. Hence is formed what is styled the prosody
of language.
It is remarkable and deserves attention that both in the Greek and
the Roman languages this musical and gesticulating pronunciation was
retained in a very high degree. The Greeks, it is well known, were a
more musical people than the Romans, and carried their attention to
the tone and pronunciation much farther in every public exhibition.
Aristotle, in his poetics, considers the music of tragedy one of
its chief and essential parts. The case was more than parallel in
regard to gestures, for strong tones and animated gestures always go
together. At last gesture came to engross the stage wholly, for under
the reigns of Augustus and Tiberius the favorite entertainment of the
public was pantomime, carried on entirely by gesticulations.
XII.
DESCRIPTIVE LANGUAGES.
A Frenchman both varies his accents and gesticulates while he speaks
much more than an Englishman, and an Italian a great deal more than
either. Musical pronunciations and expressive gesture are, to this
day, the distinction of Italy, and this combination of sign and its
aid, sound, the latter being notes for its music, make the sweetest
and most liquid language in existence. The want of a proper name for
every object, obliged them to use one name for many objects, and, of
course, to express themselves by comparisons, metaphors, allusions
and all those substantive forms of speech which render language
figurative.
Poetry is more ancient than prose, and here we have a remarkable
order of speech, such as "fruit give me." I, therefore, conclude, as
the first fundamental principle in the organization and procession
of word-signs, that this would be the order in which words should be
most commonly arranged at the beginning of language, and accordingly,
we find, in fact, that in this order words are arranged in most of
the ancient tongues--the Russian, Slavonic, Gaelic, and many others.
In the Latin the arrangement which most commonly obtains is to place
first in the sentence that word which expresses the principal object,
together with its circumstance, and afterward the person or thing
which acts upon it.
I desire to impress most particularly upon the reader the value of
signs and sounds in the language, for he would be a fool, indeed, who
would not mark the significance of a tone or a gesture.
The word-signs in the English language number thirty-eight
thousands. This includes, of course, not only the radical words,
but all the derivatives, except the preterites and participles of
verbs, to which must be added some few terms which, though set
down in your dictionary, are either obsolete or have never ceased
to be considered foreign. They have been introduced into your Noah
Webster, "unabridged," together with many thousands of conjunctive
and scientific words, for the sole purpose of making a big book
and claiming that there are one hundred thousand word-signs in the
English language. Of the thirty-eight thousands about twenty-three
thousands are of Anglo-Saxon origin. The majority of the remainder,
in what exact proportion I cannot say, are Latin and Greek, but the
largest share is Latin. The names of the greater part of the objects
of sense, in other words, the terms which occur most frequently in
discourse, or which recall the most vivid conceptions, in the English
vocabulary, are Anglo-Saxon. The names of the most striking objects
in visible nature, of the chief agencies at work and of the changes
which pass over it, are Anglo-Saxon.
This language has given names to the heavenly bodies, namely, the
sun, the moon and the stars, to three out of every four elements,
namely, earth, fire and water; to three out of every four seasons,
namely, spring, summer and winter, and, indeed, to all the natural
divisions of time, except one, as day, night, morning, evening,
twilight, noon, midday, midnight, sunrise, sunset, some of which are
among the most poetical terms in the language.
To the same language we are indebted for the names of light, heat,
cold, frost, rain, snow, hail, sleet, thunder, lightning, as well
as almost all those objects which form the component parts of the
beautiful and external scenery as seen in land, hill and dale,
wood and stream. It is from this language you derive the word most
expressive of the earliest and dearest connections and the strongest
and most powerful feelings of nature, and which are, consequently,
invested with your oldest and most complicated associations. In
this language we find the names of father, mother, husband, wife,
brother, sister, son, daughter, child, home, kindred, friends. It has
furnished the greater part of those metonymies and other figurative
expressions by which is represented to the imagination, and that in
a single word the reciprocal duties and enjoyments of hospitality,
friendship or love. Such are hearth, roof and fireside. The chief
emotions of which we are susceptible, as love, hope, fear, sorrow,
shame, and what is of more consequence to the orator and the poet,
as well as in common life, the outward signs by which emotion is
indicated, are almost all Anglo-Saxon. Such are tear, smile, blush,
to laugh, to weep, to sigh, to groan.
Most of those objects about which the practical reason of man is
employed in common life receive their names from the Anglo-Saxon.
XIII.
LANGUAGE OF DIVINE ORIGIN.
One of our greatest poets says,
"'Tis not enough no harshness gives offense,
The sound must seem an echo of the sense."
The words buzz, crackle, crash, blow, rattle, roar, hiss, whistle,
and many others of a like nature and construction, were evidently
formed to imitate the sounds themselves. Sometimes the word
expressing an object is formed to imitate the sound produced by that
object, as waye, cuckoo, whippoorwill, whisper, hum. I have been thus
particular in calling the attention of the reader to these beautiful
characteristics of the Anglo-Saxon because it is the language of the
Cat in so far as word-signs are used in it for want of action to
express the ideas or as conjunctives more particularly. The smooth
and liquid passages from your poets, which express onomatopoeia, are
but echoes from that most beautiful of all languages, that of the
Cat. Such are the word-signs of Goldsmith,
"The whitewashed wall, the nicely sanded floor,
The varnished clock that clicked behind the door."
To the credit of the Cat language it must be said that, while it
is esteemed a great beauty in writing and conversation, as well as
speaking, when the word-signs selected for the expression of an idea
convey, by their sound, some resemblance to the subject which they
express, the Cat language contains none but such words. You will
remember the most wonderful poem written in the English language, and
notice the word-painting in the following extract from "Gray's Elegy
in a Country Churchyard,"
"For who, to dumb forgetfulness a prey,
This pleasing, anxious being e'er resigned,
Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day,
Nor cast one longing, lingering look behind!"
Pope, also, in his "Essay on Criticism," in a manner though different
yet scarcely less expressive, gives a verbal representation of his
idea, by the selection of his terms in the following:
"These equal syllables alone require,
Though oft the ear the open vowels tire,
While expletives their feeble aid do join,
And ten low words oft creep in one dull line."
And, once again, Pope says,
"A needless Alexandrian ends the song,
That, like a wounded snake, drags his slow length along.
Soft is the strain when zephyrs gently blow,
And the smooth streams in smoother numbers flow,
But when loud surges lash the sounding shore,
The hoarse, rough verse should, like the torrent, roar.
When Ajax strives some rock's vast weight to throw,
The line, too, labors, and the words move slow.
Not so when swift Camilla scours the plain,
Flies o'er the unbending corn, and skims along the main."
I am of the opinion that language is of Divine origin, and that
it was put into the mouth of the Cat, the same as it was put
into the mouth of Adam, by the Almighty. In this opinion I am
encouraged by many of your most prominent writers. In fact, it is
the only sensible theory upon which we can stand. But the very
first expression of a desire was a sign by action of the muscles,
frequently followed by a sound-sign. This has often been demonstrated
when infants have been placed, for a year or more, in a room where
no speech or expressive action has met either eye or ear, and it has
not yet been doubted. Many men have written upon the subject of the
origin of language, from every point of view, the majority of these
endeavoring to account for its existence without allowing that it
is of Divine origin. Undoubtedly the first man, Adam, could talk as
naturally as he could hear, see and taste. Speech was a part of his
endowment. Is there anything more wonderful in man's talking than
in a bird singing, save that speech is a higher order of utterance?
Dumb nature, so called, performs marvels every day as wonderful as
man talking. The honey bee builds its cell, ignorant of the fact that
such a construction is a solution of a problem which had troubled
men for centuries to solve--namely, at what point should certain
lines meet so as to give the most room with the least material and
have the greatest strength in building? This problem is said to have
been worked out by a Mr. McLaughlin, a noted Scotch mathematician,
who arrived at his conclusion by a laborious and careful fluctionary
calculation. To his surprise and the surprise of the whole world,
such lines and such a building were found in the common bee cell. Is
there anything preposterous in my assertion that the same Creator
who gave to the bee the mathematical instinct, could endow animals
with the instinct of speech? In proportion as the English language
has clung to the purest of Anglo-Saxon words it has gained strength
throughout the world, while there have gone down before it the real
British, the Cymeric or Welsh, Erse or Irish, the Gaelic of Scotland,
and the Manx of the Isle of Man. The British Keltic is entirely gone,
and the rest are only local. Besides these, it ousted from the island
of Norse the Norman French and several other tongues which had sought
to plant themselves on English soil.
My illustrious comrade, Prevost Paradol, one of our most learned
Frenchmen, says: "Neither Russia nor united Germany, supposing
that they should attain the highest fortune, can pretend to impede
that current of things, nor prevent that solution, relatively near
at hand, of the long rivalry of European races for the ultimate
colonization and domination of the universe. The world will not
be Russian, nor German, nor French, alas! nor Spanish. It will be
Anglo-Saxon."
It was one of Britain's greatest poets who wrote the following
characteristic lines expressive of the force of languages:
"Greek's a harp we love to hear,
Latin is a trumpet clear;
Spanish, like an organ, swells,
Italian rings its bridal bells;
France, with many a frolic mien,
Tunes her sprightly violin;
Loud the German rolls his drum,
When Russia's clashing cymbals come
But Britain's sons may well rejoice,
For English is the human voice."
It is a noticeable fact that there have been five hundred distinct
languages, and about three thousand five hundred colloquials, or
about five thousand different forms of speech since Adam's time. At
the present time five hundred of the primary are dead, so that there
are about nine hundred now spoken on all the earth, with about two
thousand five hundred colloquials.
Canon Farrar says: "We may, therefore, assert, as Dante did, more
than five centuries ago,
"That man speaks, is nature's prompting;
Whether thus or thus she leaves to you
As you do most affect it."
I am surprised at some of the heedlessness of your philologists, and
do not wonder that your children have a hard time of it acquiring
your language when they are so carelessly misdirected in many
instances, misled in many more and given rules which even the fully
developed mind of a man is unable to comprehend. It is not from one
alone of your linguists that I take this definition of the word
"language." "Language is the expression of our ideas by articulate
sounds, such as the signs of the ideas." Your Noah Webster, who
gathered together all dictionaries extant, including all scientific
words and definitions, and dumped them into his big book, gives the
definition of the word "language" as follows: "The expression of
ideas by words or significant articulate sounds for the communication
of thought."
Now, if these definitions are correct, and you choose to accept them
as being so, what becomes of the "language" of the deaf and dumb?
XIV.
POWER OF SPEECH IN THE FELINE.
It is not true that all animals have vocal chords. Some are
marsupial, such as the kangaroo, and have membranous vocal chords,
which stretch upon themselves and so cannot be stretched by the
arytenoid muscles. A few of them are mammalia, such as the giraffe,
the porcupine, and the armadillo, have no vocal chords, and are,
therefore, mute. This is also the case with the cetacea, the loud
bellowing of the whale being produced by the expulsion of water
through the nostrils during the act of expiration. Serpents have no
vocal chords, and their hiss is the result of breathing forcibly down
through a soft glottis. Frogs have no trachea, so that their larynx
opens into the bronchial tube, but the loudness of the croaking
of male frogs is due to the distension of two membranous sacs at
the side of the neck. Some frogs have membranous vocal chords,
others two reed-like bodies, the anterior ends of which are fixed,
while the posterior ends with the ventricles of the larynx and the
laryngo-pharyngeal sacs looking into the bronchi are free.
The vocal organs of both man and the other animals present a general
resemblance to each other, despite varying degrees of development.
Cats have a sac between the thyroid cartilage and the os hyoideum,
which have much to do with the modifying and increasing of the
tones of the voice. The laryngeal sacs are small, and thus prevent
what might be a shrill cry, such as the deafening shrieks of the
monkeys of Africa. The epiglottis is comparatively small, and there
are proportionately small cavities in the thyroid cartilage and the
os hyoideum, which communicate with the ventricles of the larynx
and the laryngeal-pharyngeal sacs, which give the peculiar softness
of musical tone to the feline, as may be noted by a merely casual
observer, and is accounted one of the most delightful characteristics
of the Cat.
The brain of the Cat so closely resembles that of man as to force the
unwilling admission from anatomists and physiologists that in form
and substance they bear so close and striking a similarity that it
must be conceded that they are, to all intents and purposes, the same
in substance and conformation, and differ only in weight and size. It
will be seen, from this admission of the greatest of physiologists
and anatomists, possessed as men are of the natural prejudice against
all animals, saving only man, in the way of his ascendency in every
respect above all other animals, that, in the proportion of weight of
brain and under similar circumstances, the intelligence of the Cat is
equal to that of man. These forced admissions must necessarily carry
conviction with them, so that I shall hope, at no distant day, to
hear the admission of what to me is a proven fact, that in the ratio
of the size of the two brains the Cat is equal in intelligence to man
under the same existing circumstances.
The negro of America, brought up in ignorance and under servile
conditions, a slave, classified as cattle, was once considered an
inferior order of the human species by some, and by many as a
biped, but a long step beneath his now regarded white brother. Time
and experience developed the fact that the negro was susceptible
of cultivation, and his ebony brain, contained in a skull of twice
and thrice the thickness of the white man's, has been polished to
a high degree, in exceptional cases, although I must admit that
this polishing has been found to be in proportion to the degree of
amalgamation with other races, particularly that of the white man.
Anatomists are unanimous in their opinions and their experiments show
conclusively that the Cat has a much finer and more delicate organism
than the dog. Upon this universal deduction I argue that they are
more sensitive than the dog, a proposition which meets the approval
of every naturalist, anatomist and pathologist who has ever taken
the subject into consideration. In fact, it is almost universally
conceded that Cats are fully as intelligent as dogs, and by many the
feline is regarded as the superior animal in every respect.