1. In man, language is the expression of thought and judgment, while the sounds of animals are merely spontaneous and natural utterances.
2. Language in man is the product of reasoning; it presupposes a perception of the relation of the subject and the predicate. For instance, when I say, Man is immortal, I must perceive the relation of the attribute immortality to man. Now, the sound of the animal is merely expressive of some solitary feeling.
3. Man directs his words, while the brute’s sound is ever the same.
Another instance of Darwin’s logic is found in tracing the origin of the expression of sulkiness in man, especially in children. This feeling, he says, is expressed by a protrusion of the lips, or, as it is called, “making a snout.” Now, he continues, “young orangs and chimpanzees protrude their lips to an extraordinary degree, when they are discontented, somewhat angry, or sulky” (p. 234).
But, lo! what is his conclusion? Therefore, he infers, this habit of man was a primordial habit in his “semi-human progenitors,” who are, of course, no less than the aforesaid honorable monkeys. Let us hear his words: “If, then, our semi-human progenitors [i.e. Messrs. Orang and Chimpanzee] protruded their lips when sulky or a little angered in the same manner as do the existing anthropoid apes, it is not an anomalous though a curious fact that our children should exhibit, when similarly affected, a trace of the same expression” (p. 234). Mr. Darwin is cunning. He wishes tacitly to infer that man comes from the animal, because both can make “snouts.” Of course, even he must concede that the monkey can make a better or at least a longer “snout” than man. And hence the principles of evolution in this case at least would imply retrogression, not progress. His mode of reasoning is strange indeed. When he finds an expression in man, he searches whether there is anything like it among the monkeys or other animals; and, when he has discovered even a slight trace, he triumphantly exclaims, Behold the progenitors of man! He does not yet call them genitors; they are not the immediate parents, but simply grandfathers and grandmothers. Nor are these progenitors quite human; they are as yet semi-human, being about half-way between the monkey phase and that of man. Speaking of man, he says: “The lips are sometimes protruded during rage in a manner the meaning of which I do not understand, unless it depends on our descent from some ape-like animal” (p. 243). Mr. Darwin manifests a strange partiality for the ape-like animals.
But it is no wonder he cannot understand the plainest facts, which every Catholic child can tell him. He sets aside all revealed truths. He knows nothing about the simple but sublime narrative in the first chapter of Genesis. He ignores the creative act bringing forth, not one kind, but “the living creature in its kind, cattle, and creeping things, and beasts of the earth according to their kinds.”[173] To him, this is of no meaning. True, the Scripture records the solemn creation of man as entirely distinct from that of animals. “Let us make man,” God said, “to our image, and likeness; and let him have dominion over the fishes of the sea, and the fowls of the air,” etc. “And God created man to his own image: to the image of God he created him, male and female he created them.”[174] True, Darwin will say, according to the Scripture, “God breathed into his [man’s] face the breath of life, and man became a living soul.”[175]
But what care I for the Scriptures, when my own private and infallible reason leads me to think that God did not directly breathe into man an intelligent soul—made after God’s own image and likeness—but rather that man received it from the animal? Such is, indeed, the result of the revolt of reason against God. Like Satan, who was cast from heaven in a moment, when desirous of elevating his throne to a level with that of God, so man falls and degrades himself when he becomes too proud to listen to God’s Word, making reason the supreme and sole criterion of truth and certitude.
Mr. Darwin seems to admit a Creator of the universe, but holds that only one, or at most four, species were created. Now, we must not forget, as he certainly does, that the Creator was an infinitely intelligent being, and therefore had some object in view in creation. Every intelligent being must act for some end. We call him a fool who knows not what he is doing, and therefore is foolish. Hence, in creation, God destined each creature for some end, to accomplish a certain task. The Creator must, however, give to each creature the necessary means to attain its end. It would be unintelligible that God should destine me to walk, without giving me feet; or create me to earn my livelihood by the labor of my hands, without giving me hands to work with.
Now, this principle, so universally exhibited in nature, will easily and satisfactorily explain all expressions in animals as well as in man, without obliging us to have recourse to the monkey theory so fondly adhered to by Darwin.