II. The hypothesis of a progressive evolution of speech, while dating from antiquity, has only taken a consistent form in our own days, under the influence of transformist doctrines. The work of anthropologists and of linguists, above all of the former, it finds support in the study of inferior idioms and of the comparative method. Its fundamental thesis is that articulate language is the result of a long elaboration, lasting for centuries, in which we may with some probability reconstitute the stages. While its authors are not in complete agreement it may be said that, generally speaking, they admit three periods: the cry, vocalisation, articulation. The cry is the primordial fact, the pure animal language, a simple vocal aspiration, without articulation. It is either reflex, expressing needs and emotions, or, at a stage higher, intentional (to call, warn, menace, etc.). It has been said that the speechlessness of animals is due to the imperfection of their auditory[?] organs, and want of organic correspondence between their acoustic images and the muscular movements that produce sound: but the cause of this aphasia must also, and above all, be referred to their weak cerebral development; this applies also to primitive man. “What function could words have fulfilled when the anthropoid of the Neanderthal or the Naulette roamed, naked and solitary, from ditch to ditch, through the thick atmosphere, over marshy soil, stone in hand, seeking edible plants or berries, or the trail of females as savage as himself?”[47] It is intelligence that creates its instruments, as well speech as all the rest.