Speech alone being the habitual and natural language of mankind, endowed otherwise with special organic specifications in order to produce it, we have been generally led to confound these two distinct things in speaking of mankind, viz., _speech_ and _language_. This being allowed, the first question which we have to examine is this, “Has man always possessed the faculty of speech?”. A difficult question, but one which we have no right to proclaim as impossible to be solved, which is, perhaps, not the case, and of which the difficulty belongs principally to the very imperfect knowledge which we possess concerning the distant epoch which saw mankind in his cradle.[77] Let us first of all remember that man has, in common with animals, voice, cries, natural inflections (M. Flourens), that which we otherwise call _natural language_. “Like a simple animal,” says Herder,[78] “man possesses the faculty of speech. All the most violent and painful sensations of his body, as well as the strong passions of his mind, are manifested immediately by cries or inflections of the voice, by natural and inarticulate sounds. The animal which suffers--as well as the hero Philoctetes--when it feels sorrow will moan and sigh, even when abandoned in a desert island, far from the sight of any friendly creature, without any hope of succour.” This language is intelligible between all animals, between animals and ourselves, and between ourselves and animals. We may affirm that man possesses it always, from the first hour of his birth. As to articulated language, as _artificial language_ has been called in opposition to the preceding, the question is much more confused and much less clearly defined.