Thus, the arguments which claim to establish an insuperable distance between man and animals, generally rest upon imperfectly observed facts. On the contrary, in animals, we find the more or less visible rudiments of everything which has evolved so magnificently in humanity. We cannot describe in detail how and why this species has become, so to speak, incomparable and incommensurable with the others. It must have got the upperhand, not in virtue of this and that particular advantage, (although an important one), such as the upright position or the possession of a hand, but on account of the co-operation of many favourable conditions, of which the totality allowed, so to speak, of an almost indefinite development. From a certain moment, there was a definite stoppage in the social evolution of the other species, and the progress of the human species was decisive. We cannot estimate the initial influence of the various conditions according to the present development of the several human faculties, for this development is especially due to the social life of which those conditions allowed. Each superiority of man may have been very little defined originally. Time, the action of the other higher functions, exercise, heredity have played their part here. The “human attributes” must then have grown constantly, ever consolidating the “ascendency” which they had determined. At the same time the corresponding attributes must have diminished in the rival species, as they were brought to a standstill in their development. Undoubtedly, by degrees, the interval has widened until it has become a gap so broad and so deep as to make it impossible to imagine how it could ever have been crossed. But biology and sociology help us to judge better. We must see this, in some detail, in connection with the important question of language. III. The theory of language, during the eighteenth century, had been one of the favourite subjects of philosophical speculation; in general, it had proceeded in this matter, by way of abstract and logical analysis. It chiefly saw in language a product of the intellectual faculties of man. But, already, from the second half of the century, this conception had been attacked in Germany by the school which began the reaction against the “philosophers,” and in which the most illustrious name is that of Herder. In France the traditionalist school felt that here one of the weak points of the philosophy of the eighteenth century was being touched. It insisted upon the characters of language which this philosophy did not explain. Comte knew the works of this school, and, in particular, those of M. de Bonald, whom he calls an “energetic thinker.”[215] But his method differs from theirs, and he only agrees with them in the critical part of their doctrine.