thoughts of his mind.[1] That is, the parrot has the physical organs and imitative faculty but not the intellectual capacity for speaking. Nor does the mere fact that they talk raise the Sing-sing and parrot, for example, from the rank of brute creatures. Birds and beasts having an inferior organisation cannot develope their nature at all points. They may in some respects shew good moral qualities, the germs of which are in them at birth by heavenly appointment, but they do not advance in moral and intellectual culture. The crow has filial piety and the wild duck is true to its mate; the fox does not forget the place of his birth, and the ant helps all of its kin. But does a crow bury his mother or a fox give way to his elders? Do the wild ducks wait for the go-between before they pair, and have the ants any form of worship? The parrot and the starling may talk but they have no sense of the fitness of time and place, and so are no better than other birds. A featherless biped, as a native writer says, may speak, but without li (禮) he is not man. It is this sense of order and of doing what is right and becoming in the family and in society, and the code of obligations thence resulting, this li which lifts man above the other creatures.[2] Some of these can indeed produce articulate utterances, after having learned them, by imitation, as an infant learns its first words by imitating its mother. But it is human sounds, not human speech, to borrow an expression from Dante,[3] which these creatures imitate, and they are not "capable
- ↑ Huai Nan-tzŭ's Works, chap, xvi.; 頓悟入道要門論, chap. ii. On the other hand we read of men in former times who understood the language of the lower animals. See, e.g., the Supplement to the "Poh-wu-chih" (續博物志), chap. iii. There are also instances on record in which the parrot is not merely an imitator but also initiates a conversation and shows tender feeling. So also a mainah when sold to a barbarian committed suicide, saying that he was a Chinese bird and would not go among barbarians (邵氐聞見前錄, chap, xvii.) Some tell us that the mainah (秦吉了 or 吉了 or 了哥) in its wild state cannot speak, and it is only when domesticated it learns to talk.
- ↑ 淵鑑類函, chaps. ccccxxi. and ccccxxxii.; "Li-chi," chap, i., and Confucian writers generally. Of the term Li (禮), Callery, an excellent authority, writes as follows: "Autant que possible, je l'ai traduit par le mot Rite, dont le sens est susceptible d'un grande étendue; mais il faut convenir que, suivant les circonstances où il est employé, il pent signifier 'Cérémonial, Cérémonies, Pratiques cérémoniales L'étiquette, Politesse, Urbanité, Courtoisie, Honnêteté, Bonnes manières, Egards, Bonne éducation, Bienséance, Les formes, Les convenances, Savoir vivre, Décorum, Décence, Dignité personelle, Moralité de conduite, Ordre social, Devoirs de société, Lois sociales, Devoirs, Droit, Morale, Lois hiérarchiques, Offrande, Usages, Coutumes.," "Li-ki," introduction, p. 16.
- ↑ See his "Delia Volg. Eloq.," L. i., chap. ii.
