Prof. Max Müller charges against the evolutionist, that “the very fact that no animal has ever formed a language is put aside simply as an unfortunate accident.” Is this a fair reprehension? Is not the fact that no animal, except man, crossed the Rubicon of language quite a distinct problem? And accepting Professor Noiré’s theory of the origin of language which considers speech as the product of a common activity accompanied by what may be called _clamor concomitans_, I see very good reasons why other animals did not develop language. First, there is no animal, with the sole exception perhaps of ants and bees, that lives in societies. Some of them live in herds, but there is a great difference between a herd and a society. This difference is first a difference of degree, but gradually it becomes a difference of kind. Secondly, animals have no organs to work with, while man has his hands, and we may add, thirdly, that no animal, not even the parrot, has the same power of articulation. Prof. Ludwig Noiré accepts without equivocation the idea that the speechless ancestor of man became a rational being by developing language and I was always under the impression that Prof. Max Müller agreed with his late friend not only concerning the identity of language and reason, but also concerning the origin of reason. But if Prof. Max Müller agrees with Noiré, why does he object to the continuity of evolution which as he states in a private letter to us is “only a beautiful postulate”? Now there are indeed facts which prove that the Rubicon of reason is not so impassable to animals as Prof. Max Müller makes us believe. Let us hear Noiré on the subject. He explains most logically that man performs his many labors and has become a civilised being only with the help of language, by naming things and handling them in his mind. Noiré says: “It can be graphically shown, how ideas may represent for man the rôle of things real; how man has acquired the power of combining in his representative faculty the most remote objects, and thereby has been able to accomplish the great miracles of human industry and commerce. But all this would be utterly inconceivable without concepts, which impart to percepts their unity and self-dependence, bring about and multiply their rational connection. Hence also, no animal can ever advance a single step beyond _present_ perceptive representation, can never escape from the constraint with which Nature circumscribes the narrow sphere of its wants. Unfortunately, however, in apparent contravention of this rule, ants to the present day carry on a regular and methodical species of agriculture, keep livestock and domestics like we! Nay, they have been caught in conversations and social entertainments of a quarter of an hour’s duration—God save the mark!”[12]