Human beings, however, can be _taught_ and _enlightened_ under the most adverse circumstances. Even those unfortunates are susceptible to it, who, like Laura Bridgman, Helen Keller, Martha Obrecht, Marie Heurtin, and others, have been blind and deaf and dumb from infancy or birth. With nearly all the light of sensibility extinguished, there was, nevertheless, latent within them something of which a perfectly normal ape, for all the integrity of its senses, is essentially destitute, namely, the superorganic power of reason. Reason, however, is extrinsically dependent on organic sensibility, and, consequently, “the gates of their souls” were closed to human converse, until such a time as the patient kindness and ingenuity of their educators devised means of reciprocal communication on a basis of tactile signals. Thereupon they revealed an intelligence perfectly akin to that of their rescuers. Years of similar education, however, would be futile in the case of an ape. The “gates of the soul” would never open, because the ape has no rational soul, to which the most ingenious trainer might gain access, in which respect it differs fundamentally from even the lowest savage. A being that lacks reason may be _trained_ by means of instruction, but it can never be _enlightened_ by it. Another consideration, that is occasionally urged in proof of bestial intelligence, is the fact that birds, mammals, and even insects communicate with one another by means of sounds or equivalent signals, which are sometimes remarkably diversified in quality and consequent efficacy. “Since fowls,” writes Darwin, “give distinct warnings for danger on the ground, or in the sky, from hawks ..., may not some unusually wise ape-like animal have imitated the growl of a beast of prey, and thus told his fellow monkeys the nature of the expected danger? This would have been a first step in the formation of a language.” (“Descent of Man,” 2nd ed., ch. III, pp. 122, 123.) This is saltatory logic with a vengeance! Darwin leaps at one bound across the entire chasm between irrationality and rationality, without pausing to build even the semblance of a bridge. Given an animal with the foresight and inventiveness requisite to employ onomatopœia for the _purpose_ of specifying the _nature_ of an expected _danger_, in the _interest_ of its fellows, and we need not trouble ourselves further about plausibleizing any transition; for so “unusually wise” an ape is already well across the gap that separates reason from unreason, and far on its way towards the performance of all the feats of which reason is capable. After swallowing the camel of so much progress, it would be straining at a gnat to deny such a paragon of simian genius the mere power of articulate speech. Of course, if imagination rather than logic, is to be the dominant consideration in science, there is no difficulty in imagining animals to be capable of thinking or doing