Mind 85potential for language resides. Language theorist Derek Bickerton observes that
language is probably ‘the antecedent of most or even all of the other characteristics
that differentiate us even from our closest relatives among the apes’. The miracle of
this ability to understand, use and make language is the miracle of being human.
‘Simply by making noises with our mouths, we can reliably cause precise new
combinations of ideas to arise in each other’s minds.’^11
There has always been a popular view, endorsed to some extent by Darwin’s
ideas about language, that places the calls of birds and the cries of animals on a
single spectrum of communication. This is to say that humans do the same as
animals, except that they do it more and better. Yet the attempts of primatologists
who spend years teaching a chimpanzee to recognize and in some way make use of
four or five words, or the intensive efforts of marine biologists to decipher the
communication systems of dolphins, are projects that seem to confound any claim
that even the most intelligent of other mammals have anything like language.
They communicate, but they do not have language. There is no equivalent of
grammar or syntax; no parallel, therefore, to the way human children learn to
speak. Animals do not do what humans call thinking. They may exist in a Zen-like
state, where the brain works without self-consciousness (consciousness is also
inseparable from words), but they are not thinking. This is why animals are out-
side moral judgements and why, also, they inspire such a sense of puzzlement. To
look into their eyes is to see a creature with a brain. We see facial expressions and
even gestures that are very like our own. Yet something is missing.
We humans may be able to get a sense of animal ‘thinking’ from our remark-
able capacity to make quite complex decisions without thought. The driver of a car
who suddenly has to deal with an emergency is capable of making a quick set of
decisions – changing gears and speed and direction – without any apparent think-
ing. Similarly, drivers of cars often have the experience of picking the route home
without being aware of doing so. Actions of this and many other kinds are said to
be unconscious, in that the thinking takes place somewhere other than where we
are using – or are aware of using – language. The terms ‘mindless’ and ‘thoughtless’
indicate the significance of action that fails to proceed from the necessary mental
processes: such behaviour is wrong, in either a moral or a practical sense, precisely
because we did not think – that is, we acted without the benefit of words.
In mythology and literature, creatures that are almost human are often mon-
sters. Their animal characteristics are exaggerated in a symbolic manner: they rep-
resent the frightening power of the animal in ourselves. These creatures are
somehow primitive or savage; they take human shape, yet are outside human cul-
ture. And their condition draws its most poignant qualities from their lack of
articulate language. Prospero’s Caliban, Beauty’s Beast, King Kong, Marian Engel’s
Bear. The stories in which such characters have greatest effect are those in which
they are discovered to be innocent despite their apparent beastliness. They are
without the guile of language.
When human beings began to use language, their brain structure made an
evolutionary leap of huge importance. The physiological difference between those