These ethnologists, too, always make the old mistake of confounding the learning of a language, as is done by every child, with the first invention or formation of a language. The two things are as radically different as the labour of miners who bring forth to the light of day gold ore out of the depths of the earth, and the enjoyment which the heirs of a rich man have in squandering his cash. The two things are quite different, and yet there are books upon books which attempt to draw conclusions as to the creation of language from children learning to talk. We have at least now got so far as to admit that language facilitates thinking; but that language first made thought possible, that it was the first step in the development of the human mind, but few anthropologists have seen.(47) They do not know what language in the true sense of the word means, and still think that it is only communication, and that it does not differ from the signals made by chamois, or the information imparted by the antennæ of ants. Henry Drummond goes so far as to say that “Any means by which information is conveyed from one mind to another, is language.”(48) That is entirely erroneous. The entire chapter on sign language, interesting as it is, must be treated quite differently by the philologist, compared with the ethnologist. When the sign is such as was used in the old method of telegraphing, and meant a real word, or, as in modern electric telegraphy, even a letter, this is really speaking by signs; and so is the finger language of the deaf and dumb. But when I threaten my opponent with my fist, or strike him in the face, when I laugh, cry, sob, sigh, I certainly do not speak, although I do make a communication, the meaning of which cannot be doubted. Not every communication, therefore, is language, nor does every act of speaking aim at a communication. There are philologists who maintain that the first words were merely a clearing of the ideas, a sort of talking to oneself. This may have been so or not, at any rate it appears to me that in such primitive times, practical ends deserve the first consideration. No one can distinguish the difference in the stages of mental development, between wiping the perspiration from the brow after work, which signifies and communicates to every observer, “It is warm” or “I am tired,” and the man who can actually say, “It is warm,” “I am tired.” Thousands, millions of years may lie between these two steps. We do not know, and to attempt to fix periods of time where the means are lacking, is like pouring water into the Danaids’ sieves.