Note 23 — NOTES.1

“In a word, would it be absolutely impossible to teach the ape a language? I do not think so.” Compare with this Haeckel’s statement of the relation between man’s speech and that of apes. “It is of especial interest that the speech of apes seems on physiological comparison to be a stage in the formation of articulate human speech. Among living apes there is an Indian species which is musical; the hylobates syndactylus sings a full octave in perfectly pure harmonious half-tones. No impartial philologist can hesitate any longer to admit that our elaborate rational language has been slowly and gradually developed out of the imperfect speech of our Pliocene simian ancestors.”28