The sole difference
Between Man and Beast is found
In a whispered Word.
What makes humans so different than animals?
We can eliminate the basics because both have core instincts that drive toward continued life. Now, some would claim that animals lack emotion; but if you’ve ever seen a mourning calf wailing over his dead mother or a lonely dog welcoming her owner with wet tongue, one must suppose these creatures feel some sort of connection to their fellows.
Others may claim that it is the human’s ability to reason that separates us from the foraging beasts; but then I would have to question what it is these folks precisely mean by reason?
For, if you strip reason down to its bare essentials, you could say that reason is the ability to recognize cause and effect. By this definition, you could postulate that all trainable creatures can reason because, through training, these beasts “learn” cause and effect, i.e. a dog hears a bell and salivates because he has associated said bell with food. I grant, that such “reasoning” is quite rudimentary; nevertheless, I want to believe that humans are not simply human by a matter of degree (that is, some animals can in fact reason, but the human does it better in a more complex manner.)
Many say it’s the ability to communicate that separates us from the beasties. Again, this is faulty because animals do communicate. Perhaps, not with language, but at least nonverbally. Two male rams smash into each other. The stronger wins. These rams have communicated. And then there is the phenomenon of dolphin song, which some say is a language of sorts.
What about the specific thing called Human Language? Is that the difference?
What I’m trying to get at is that, while watching Ella grow and change, I am waiting for her to become a person. When will she become something slightly more than an “animal” struggling for survival by being so goddamn cute?
In my gut, I think that will happen when she articulates her first word, which no doubt will be a slurred and giggled: “da-da-wack-o”