If the theory of language, says Comte, is encumbered with insoluble questions, the fault lies in the method made use of by the metaphysicians. They have only considered man’s language, in its state of highest complication. They have attributed excessive importance to the signs of articulate human language, they have exaggerated the part played by reflection, and misunderstood that of spontaneity. Condillac especially and his school attributed far too much importance to the “disponibilité” of signs.[216] The scientific method will not isolate humanity from the other species which it dominates. It will connect the positive study of language with biology and with sociology: with biology more particularly for the question of origin; with sociology in so far as the development of language depends upon the reaction of social life upon domestic life. The starting-point of the theory is a fact of experience. Every strong emotion is accompanied by the impulse to manifest it, and this expression reacts upon the emotion itself. Many species exhibit this.[217] Singing and mimicking, or rather cries and gestures, are often used by them, as by man, not only to relieve the passions, but to excite them more. For instance, anger in carnivorous animals grows to exasperation, through the external signs which the animal gives of it. Comte is in accordance with the observations of Bell and of Gratiolet. The movements which co-operate in expression, he says, coincide in general with those which are made use of in action. Moreover, in the human species, for the most part, the individual expresses his affections in order to satisfy them better, by inducing his fellow-creatures to second him. It is an appeal to sympathy. If then the expression results from the feeling, it tends, conversely to develop and to consolidate it. The origin of language is thus affective, that is to say _æsthetic_, since “we only express ourselves after having felt strongly.” Language therefore translates feelings before thoughts, and this is what the followers of the ideologist theory did not see. Even to-day, in our most developed language, we can still trace this origin. It reveals itself by the musical accent of the slightest speech. Expression is always inspired and maintained by some affection, even in cases where it is apparently limited to a simple scientific or technical exposition. The affective source of language, dissimulated as it is by the intellectual operations of which it is the instrument, reveals itself in the inflexions of the voice.