From the Tree to the Labyrinth

4

The Dog That Barked (and Other Zoosemiotic Archaeologies)

By no means soft on Scholasticism, in his De dignitate et augmentis scientiarum (I, 24), Francis Bacon, after reminding us that Scylla had the face and bosom of a young and beautiful woman, points out that she subsequently revealed herself (according to Virgil’s Eclogue VI, 75) “candida succinctam latrantibus inguina monstris” (“with howling monsters girt about her white waist”).¹ Whereupon Bacon goes on to comment that in the writings of the Scholastics one finds concepts appealing at first sight, but which, when you delve more deeply into their distinctions and divisions, rather than proving fertile and capable of generating benefits for human life, “in portentosas et latrantes quaestiones desinunt” (“end in monstrous altercations and barking questions”).²

The Scholastics could never have suspected that at the beginning of the seventeenth century their exquisite quaestiones would be rudely defined as “barking” (latrantes), particularly since, in a number of those quaestiones, they had devoted their respectful and benevolent attention to nothing less than the barking of the dog. What did they have to say on the subject? Did they have anything new to say or did they simply repeat traditional notions handed down from the ancient world?

4.1. Animals from Antiquity to the Middle Ages

4.1.1. The Soul, Rights, and Language of Beasts in Antiquity

In myths and fables animals never quit talking, and these anthropomorphic fantasies reveal how we human beings have always been fascinated by our inscrutable fellow travelers, always at the ready with promises of troubling and illuminating revelations.

As for the philosophers and encyclopedists, a comprehensive survey would take up too much space, and the relevant bibliography is extremely vast. We will therefore confine ourselves to a particular consideration of those arguments that, among the various animals, are concerned with the dog. The comparison between the philosopher and the dog recorded (albeit tongue in cheek) by Plato (Republic II, 375a–376b) is well known. Well-bred dogs are gentle toward their familiars and aggressive toward strangers, and this demonstrates a happy trait in their nature: “your dog is a true philosopher, I venture to say.” The dog can tell a friendly figure from a hostile one purely on the grounds that he is familiar with the one and not the other: How can we deny a certain learning ability to a creature who is able to distinguish friends and strangers simply on the basis of knowledge or ignorance?

The Latin Aristotle makes a distinction between mere sound (sonus) and voice (vox) or utterance, and in De anima (II, 429b) he says that a sound can be defined as a “voice” when it is emitted by an animated being and is significant (semantikos). In any case, animal sounds are not emitted according to convention (they are not symbols, but manifestations of something at a symptomatic level) and they are agrammatoi, that is, not articulate (see, for instance, De interpretatione [On Interpretation] 16a and Poetics 1456b).

We will return to these distinctions later, because they will become central in the medieval debate. Aristotle asserts in his Politics that man is the only animal to possess the faculty of language, but this tells us nothing yet about the animals, because, as we will see, ever since antiquity there have been three recurring problems that crop up in this regard: (i) whether animals have a soul, or at least some form of intelligence; (ii) whether they communicate in some way among themselves and with us; and (iii) whether we should respect their dignity by abstaining from killing them and eating their flesh.

The Aristotelian texts that discuss point (i) are the subject of widespread debate, because, though Aristotle, in defining the soul as “the first actuality of a natural body possessed of organs” (De anima [On the Soul] II, i, 412b), could not deny a soul to animals, it is often unclear what kind of intelligence he means to attribute to them, given that not only was he clear about the distinction between the sensitive and the rational souls, but he drew distinctions among the intellective qualities of different animal species, without reaching any definitive conclusions (De anima II, 413b–414a).

What is certain is that the Historia animalium (History of Animals) (VIII and IX), for example, claims that many animals exhibit traces of psychic qualities (though these may be merely analogous to those of humans), inasmuch as certain beasts display kindness and courage, timidity, fear, and cunning, and quite often something approaching sagacity—so that at times these virtues appear to differ from those possessed by human beings only in degree. Aristotle even seems to suggest an evolutionary progress (from plant to animal and from animal to man), in which it is not easy to draw lines of demarcation. Some animals do not confine themselves to procreating in a specific season, and, while many devote themselves to providing food for their offspring only to abandon them later, others are endowed with memory and live longer in the company of their young, establishing forms of social collaboration. Still others are capable of giving or receiving instructions, both in their intraspecies relationships as well as with humans, whose commands they appear to understand. The Metaphysics (A, 1) states that animals are naturally endowed with sensation, but the more intelligent ones are those in which sensation gives rise to memory, and it is they who are more apt to learn than those without the ability to remember (and this is where the dog comes in). All animals unable to hear sounds (the bee, for instance) may be intelligent, but they lack the ability to learn, while those that possess, in addition to memory, the sense of hearing (see also the Posterior Analytics II, 19) are able to learn. Finally, in the Nicomachean Ethics (VI, 7, 1141a), Aristotle declares that, since it can remember the past, the superior animal is capable of foreseeing its future needs.

In the Dictionary of the History of Ideas entry on “Theriophily” by George Boas (1973–1974), the citations range from Anaxagoras to Diogenes, from Democritus to Xenophon, from Philemon to Menander and Aristophanes, not to mention Theophrastus. But it is the notion of love or admiration for the animal world that is too sweeping.

Among Stoics, Academicians, and Epicureans, a debate had arisen about the possibility of an animal logos, for which the Stoic fragments offer plenty of evidence, though it is often contradictory (for a synthesis, see Pohlenz 1948–1955: I and II). The Stoics distinguish between a logos endiathetos, internally configured, that is, and a logos prophorikos, capable of manifesting itself externally. Now, whereas for Epicurus the difference between an animal voice (vox) and a human voice was simply one of degree, for the Stoics names are imposed by an explicit decision on the part of a rational mind, and therefore the various abilities attributable to animals are merely the consequence of an innate instinct of self-preservation. Along the same lines, Seneca (Ad Lucilium epistulae morales, III, cxxi) will remind us that animals are conscious of their own makeup, which explains their various abilities, and they have innate knowledge, but they are not endowed with reason.³ The adherents of the New Academy on the other hand professed more indulgent opinions with regard to the intellectual capacities of animals.

But it is precisely in the context of the Stoic debate that an argument comes to the fore, unanimously attributed to Chrysippus, and destined for great popularity. We will cite two versions of it.⁴ The one that is more famous today and more frequently quoted is that in Sextus Empiricus’s Outlines of Pyrrhonism (I, 69):

And according to Chrysippus, who shows special interest in irrational animals, the dog even shares in the far-famed “Dialectic.” This person, at any rate, declares that the dog makes use of the fifth complex indemonstrable syllogism when, on arriving at a spot where three ways meet, after smelling at the two roads by which the quarry did not pass, he rushes off at once by the third without stopping to smell. For, says the old writer, the dog implicitly reasons thus: “The creature went either by this road, or by that, or by the other: but it did not go by this road or by that: therefore it went by the other.”⁵

Sextus assumes, with respect to Chrysippus’s argument, a position closer to that of the Academicians (as will Porphyry in his De Abstinentia [On Abstinence from Killing Animals], in open polemic with the Stoics). Sextus reminds us in fact (again in his Outlines of Pyrrhonism, I, 65–77) that, through its behavior, the dog displays further aptitude for reflection and comprehension: it is able to choose between foods that are good for it and foods that are harmful; it is able to procure its food by hunting; it recognizes people’s merits by wagging its tail when it sees those with whom it is familiar and darting at strangers (it can therefore distinguish between right and wrong); it often shows prudence; and, finally, since it is capable of understanding its own passions and of mitigating them, it is able to remove its own splinters and clean its wounds, it knows it must keep the wounded limb immobile, and it can identify the herbs that will alleviate its pain. Thus, it shows that it possesses a logos. It is true that we do not understand the words of the animals, but then, we don’t understand the words of the barbarians either, who can assuredly speak; and therefore it is not absurd to believe that animals speak. And dogs certainly make different sounds in different circumstances.

But the information provided by Sextus does not appear till the second and third century A.D., while the discussion goes back somewhat earlier. It appears, for example, in the first century A.D. in the dialogue De animalibus (On Animals) of Philo of Alexandria. Philo’s brother Alexander speaks in favor of animal intelligence, citing in fact the classical example:

A hound was in pursuit of a beast. When it came to a deep [ditch] which had two trails beside it—one to the right and the other to the left, and having but a short distance yet to go, it deliberated which way would be worth taking. Going to the right and finding no trace, it returned and took the other. Since there was no clearly perceptible mark there either, with no further scenting it jumped into the [ditch] to track down hastily. This was not achieved by chance but rather by deliberation of the mind. The logicians call this thoughtful reckoning “the fifth complex indemonstrable syllogism”: for the beast might have escaped either to the right or to the left or else may have leaped. (De animalibus 45)⁶

In point of fact, for Chrysippus all the argument proved was that the instinctive behavior of animals prefigured a logical behavior, and in the dialogue Philo follows the Stoic line, polemically responding to Alexander:

Even the assertion of those who think that hounds track by making use of the fifth mode of syllogism is to be dismissed. The same could be said of those who gather clams or any other thing which moves. That they seem to follow a definite pattern is only logical speculation on the part of those who have no sense of philosophy, not even in dreams. Then one has to say that all who are in search of something are making use of the fifth mode of syllogism! These and other similar assertions are delusive fantasies of those more accustomed to the plausibility and sophistry of matters than to the discipline of examining the truth.

We agree that there are some decent and good qualities which are applicable to animals and many other functions which help preserve and maintain their courage; these are observed by sight. There is certainty in everything perceived or discerned in all the various species. But surely animals have no share of reasoning ability, for reasoning ability extends itself to a multiplicity of abstract concepts in the mind’s perception of God, the universe, laws, provincial practices, the state, state affairs, and numerous other things, none of which animals understand. (De animalibus, 84–85)⁷

One of the fundamental texts in the polemic has got to be Plutarch’s De sollertia animalium (On the Intelligence of Animals), which appeared at an unspecified date between 70 and 90 A.D. Plutarch’s position is decidedly anti-Stoical and—like Porphyry’s De abstinentia—is concerned not just with animal intelligence but with the respect we owe animals. Though the original Greek title translates as “Whether Land or Sea Animals Are Cleverer,” and the Latin sollertia is weaker than the Greek phronesis (and tends to suggest a practical intelligence guided by experience), there can be no doubt that Plutarch is endorsing the thesis of animal rationality and polemizing against the doctrines of those who would deny it. Of course animal rationality is imperfect compared with that of humans but—the argument is common throughout the polemic—similar differences also exist among humans. All living beings share sensitivity and imagination and are capable of perception. But we cannot perceive without the participation of reason, because the data perceived may escape our attention unless an intelligent behavior intervenes to highlight and interpret it (what we experience with our eyes and ears does not result in sensations without the involvement of our rational faculties). (This argument is still extremely current in contemporary cognitivism.) If this were not the case, Plutarch argues, it would be impossible to explain why animals not only perceive but also recall their perceptions and deduce from them notions they commit to memory by which to plan actions useful to their survival.⁸

This is the opening ploy in a polemic aimed ultimately at Aristotle and in general at all those who hold, as do the Stoics, that the behavior of animals is as if it were rational behavior. That would be like saying, argues Plutarch, that it is as if the swallow were to build its nest, as if the lion felt anger, as if deer were timorous—or, worse still, as if animals could see, as if they emitted sounds, as if they were alive.

Different capacities certainly exist, and they exist among animals just as they exist among humans, admits Plutarch, but to say that some beings have weaker rational faculties than others does not mean that they don’t have them at all: “Let us rather say that they possess an infirm and murky intellect, like an eye afflicted with feeble and blurred vision.” He is no doubt referring to the Academicians when he affirms that animals have a share in reason because their behavior proves that they have intentions, preparation, memory, emotions, care for their offspring, gratitude for benefits received, resentment toward those who have caused them suffering, courage, sociability, temperance, and magnanimity.

There follows a plethora of examples drawn from the observation of animal behavior and finally (969 B) Chrysippus’s argument appears. Indeed, it is preceded by the example of the fox, used by some peoples to test the solidity of the ice: the fox edges slowly forward with its ear cocked listening for the flow of the current beneath the surface of the ice and, if it hears it, concludes that it has reached a layer of thin ice and stops. Chrysippus’s dog behaves in the same way.

True, at this point Plutarch tries to attenuate the force of the proof: it is perception itself, through the scent left by its quarry, that guides the dog, not a syllogism. But the undermining of Chrysippus’s argument does not impugn his final conclusion: we must oppose those who would deny reason and intelligence to animals.

In another dialogue, Bruta animalia ratione uti (“Beasts are Rational”), to those who object that it is an exaggeration to attribute reason to beings without an innate notion of the divinity, Plutarch replies by recalling the atheism of Sisyphus. Hence his rejection of a carnivorous diet, and his concession—though through gritted teeth—that we may put down noxious animals.

In his De natura animalium (On the Nature of Animals) Claudius Aelian (third century A.D.), setting aside the examples of dogs who have fallen in love with human beings (I, 6), speaks in VI, 9, of how dogs are capable of taking care of domestic tasks, so that it is enough for a poor man to have a dog who can take the place of a servant; in VI, 26, we have a series of anecdotes probably taken from Pliny—examples of dogs who laid down and died next to the bodies of their masters, of King Lysimachus’s dog who insisted on sharing the fate of death along with his master even though he could have escaped, a theme that returns in VII, 10, where we hear of dogs who identified with their barking the assassins of their masters, while in VIII, 2, the virtues and feats of hunting dogs are remembered. Aelian picks up on Chrysippus’s argument:

If even animals know how to reason deductively, understand dialectic, and how to choose one thing in preference to another, we shall be justified in asserting that in all subjects Nature is an instructress without a rival. For example, this was told me by one who had some experience in dialectic and was to some degree a devotee of the chase. There was a Hound, he said, trained to hunt; and so it was on the track of a hare. And the hare was not yet to be seen, but the Hound pursuing came upon a ditch and was puzzled as to whether it had better follow to the left or to the right. And when it seemed to have weighed the matter sufficiently, it leapt straight across. So the man who professed himself both dialectician and huntsman essayed to offer the proof of his statements in the following manner: The Hound paused and reflected and said to itself: “The hare turned either in this direction or in that or went ahead. It turned neither in this direction nor in that; therefore it went ahead.” And in my opinion he was not being sophistical, for as no tracks were visible on the near side of the ditch, it remained that the hare must have jumped over the ditch. So the Hound was quite right also to jump over after it, for certainty that this particular Hound was good at tracking and keen-scented.⁹

The facts that Aelian’s source is clearly Philo (seeing that he speaks of a ditch instead of a crossroads), and that he is well known for upholding the Stoical position, prevent him from drawing a positive conclusion from the example in favor of the canine logos, and lead him to prudently attribute the wisdom of the dog’s choice not to a chain of reasoning but to a natural instinct.

It seems to me that posterity took up the argument more in Sextus’s sense that in Philo’s. The third book of the De abstinentia of Porphyry (third–fourth century A.D.) is attuned to the anti-Stoical polemic. The arguments offered in favor of animal intelligence serve to back up a “vegetarian” thesis against their slaughter. Animals express their interior states, and the fact that we do not understand them is no more embarrassing than that we do not understand the language or thought of the Indians or the Scythians (and there are individuals and peoples who claim to comprehend the language of animals, as is proven by Philostratus, in his Life of Apollonius of Tyana, for whom the Arabs understand the language of the birds). As a consequence, we cannot define animals as being without reason simply because we do not understand them. Nor is it a convincing argument to say that only certain animals like ravens and magpies can imitate human language, because not only can humans not imitate the languages of the animals, they cannot even understand all five (sic) human languages.

There follow the usual references to the various animal abilities and to how the dog interacts intelligently and communicates with his master; we then proceed to the citation of Chrysippus’s argument (III, 6, 1), recalling that, according to Empedocles, Pythagoras, Plato, and Aristotle, the dog participates in discourse (III, 6, 6) and that the difference between internal discourse and external discourse for Aristotle is merely a difference between more and less. This is not all: animals are able to teach their young, the male shares sympathetically the birth pangs of the female, they display an acute sense of justice and sociability, they have sharper senses than ours, and if at times their reasonableness seems inferior to ours this does not mean that it is to be denied:

Let it be agreed, then, that the difference is a matter of more and less, not of complete deprivation, nor or a have and a have-not. But just as in the same species one has a healthier body and another a less healthy, and there is also as great difference with regard to illness and in good or bad constitutions, so it is for souls: one is good, another bad. Among bad souls, some are more so, others less so. Nor is there sameness among good souls: Socrates is not good in the same way as Aristotle or Plato, and in people of similar reputation there is not sameness. So, even if we think more than they do, animals are not to be deprived of thinking, any more than partridges are to be deprived of flying because falcons fly more.¹⁰

We might see in this passage from Porphyry, just as we saw in Plutarch, to say nothing of certain passages in Aristotle’s Historia animalium, the nucleus of those proto-evolutionist solutions which, in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, will be proposed, in polemic against the mechanism of Descartes, by two authors who, through their references and citations, show themselves to be familiar with these classical discussions. We have in mind the Jesuit Ignace Gaston Pardies (Discours de la connoissance des bestes, Paris, 1672)—who cites Aristotle’s Historia animalium, De anima, and De memoria, Herodotus, the dispute between Stoics and Academics, and the Saint Basil of the Hexaemeron—and the Protestant David Renaud Boullier (Essai philosophique sur l’âme des bêtes, published anonymously in 1728) who cites both Aristotle and Aelian. In Bouillier, more explicitly than in Pardies, the idea of a gradual development of species is set forth. Even among human beings there are various stages of development—the soul of a child is less developed than that of an adult—but this gradual development takes place not only in the span of a single lifetime but also from the lowest to the highest of living species. He concludes (and perhaps we may allow a man of his day a certain measure of “political incorrectness”) there are fewer differences between a monkey and a native of Africa than between a native of Africa and a European bel esprit. The souls of animals cannot conceive of God, but acknowledging that their souls belong to a less advanced stage of development than ours is not the same as demonstrating that they do not have one.

We will reencounter this proto-evolutionary position in the much better-known discussion between Buffon and Condillac. Buffon, in his Histoire naturelle II and III (1749), and later in his “Discours sur la nature des animaux” (Histoire IV, 1753), while denying thought to animals, admits that “nature descends by degrees and imperceptible nuances” and a freshwater polyp could be seen as the last of the animals and the first of the plants—and in Histoire IV there also appears the idea of the ass as a degenerate horse, which allows us a glimpse, though Buffon distances himself from the idea, of the perspective of a transformation of species. Condillac on the other hand (Traité des animaux, 1755) polemically defends the thesis of animal intelligence, and, since for him all higher abilities evolve out of sensation, he concludes that recognizing that animals are capable of developing their sensations means placing them at an evolutionary stage immediately below humans. Animals do not speak like humans, but the difference lies in a different level of complexity, “du plus au moins”—an expression that sounds almost like a quote from Porphyry.

Porphyry meanwhile (to get back to him) maintains that even the vices of animals (such as jealousy) are signs of intelligence. Be that as it may, there is one vice that animals do not have, unlike humans, and that is treachery toward those who love them. They have no cities, but neither do the Scythians, who live in caravans. They do not have written laws, but laws did not exist among humans so long so they lived in a state of natural felicity. Maybe they do not hold counsel (though that cannot be demonstrated), but not all human groups do. For these and other reasons it is demonstrated that animals possess reason—even though it may be defective in many cases—and hence the need to respect them.

Apart from the argument of Chrysippus, the text that exerted most influence on posterity from the first century A.D., and in particular on the medieval encyclopedists, is Pliny’s Naturalis historia (Natural History). In it he deals with the language of fish (book IX) and birds (book X, including birds that can speak), but what he has to say about canine intelligence in VIII, 61, is worth quoting, considering that all those who will write about the subject subsequently appear basically to be echoing his text (or referring back to the same sources):

Many also of the domestic animals are worth studying, and before all the one most faithful to man, the dog, and the horse. We are told of a dog that fought against brigands in defence of his master and although covered with wounds would not leave his corpse, driving away birds and beasts of prey; and of another dog in Epirus which recognized his master’s murderer in a gathering and by snapping and barking made him confess the crime. The King of the Garamantes was escorted back from exile by 200 dogs who did battle with those that offered resistance. The people of Colophon and also those of Castabulum had troops of dogs for their wars; these fought fiercely in the front rank, never refusing battle, and were their most loyal supporters, never requiring pay. When some Cimbrians were killed their hounds defended their houses placed on waggons. When Jason of Lycia had been murdered his dog refused to take food and starved to death. But a dog the name of which Duris gives as Hyrcanus when King Lysimachus’s pyre was set alight threw itself into the flame, and similarly at the funeral of King Hiero. Philistus also records the tyrant Gelo’s dog Pyrrhus; also the dog of Nicomedes King of Bithynia is recorded to have bitten the King’s wife Consingis because she played a rather loose joke with her husband. Among ourselves the famous Vulcatius, Cascellius’s tutor in civil law, when returning on his cob from his place near Rome after nightfall was defended by his dog from a highwayman; and so was the senator Caelius, an invalid, when set upon by armed men at Piacenza, and he did not receive a wound until the dog had been dispatched. But above all cases, in our own generation it is attested by the National Records that in the consulship of Appius Julius and Publius Silus when as a result of the case of Germanicus’s son Nero punishment was visited on Titius Sabinus and his slaves, a dog belonging to one of them could not be driven away from him in prison and when he had been flung on the Steps of Lamentation would not leave his body, uttering sorrowful howls to the vast concourse of the Roman public around, and when one of them threw it food it carried it to the mouth of its dead master; also when his corpse had been thrown into the Tiber it swam to it and tried to keep it afloat, a great crowd streaming out to view the animal’s loyalty.

Dogs alone know their master, and also recognize a sudden arrival as a stranger; they alone recognize their own names, and the voice of a member of the household; they remember the way to places however distant, and no creature save man has a longer memory.¹¹

4.1.2. The Transmigration of the Problem in the Middle Ages

Did the Middle Ages know of these texts? The Platonic texts no, but Aristotle’s Analytics will become known at least in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and in the same period the Metaphysics and the Nicomachean Ethics will also begin to circulate. Knowledge of the Politics and the Historia animalium will come a bit later.

But, in any case, the Middle Ages was familiar with Pliny and, through him, with a whole vast repertory of sources dealing with the animal world.¹² It is to Pliny that the entire encyclopedist tradition in general refers: we need only cite Isidore of Seville, who reminds us that there is no creature more intelligent than the dog:

The Latin word “dog” (canis) seems to have a Greek etymology, for the animal is called kuon in Greek. Still, some people think it is named for the sound (canor) of barking because it is loud, whence also the word “sing” (canere). No animal is smarter than the dog, for they have more sense than the others. They alone recognize their own names; they love their masters; they defend their master’s home; they lay down their life for their master; they willingly run after game with their master; they do not leave the body of their master even when he has died. Finally, it is part of their nature not to be able to live apart from humans. There are two qualities found in dogs: strength and speed.¹³

What the sources are for the Middle Ages’ familiarity with Chrysippus’s dog is uncertain, but we have already seen that the argument of the dog as syllogist appears early on in patristic culture: for Saint Basil (Hexaemeron, Homily IX) this is the example used to demonstrate that the dog has a faculty similar to reason. After this Chrysippus’s dog makes its appearance in the bestiaries; for example in the twelfth-century De Bestiis sometimes attributed to Hugh of Fouilloy (and previously attributed to Hugh of Saint Victor, but more likely anonymous).¹⁴ Later it will be mentioned by Gregory of Rimini as evidence of the fact that animals too possess the “notitia complexa de sensibilibus” (Lectura super primum et secundum Sententiarum I, 3, 1, 1).

The Middle Ages did not enjoy direct access to Porphyry’s De abstinentia, first translated into Latin in the fifteenth century by Marsilio Ficino, but information regarding his arguments had been transmitted by Saint Jerome (Adversus Jovinianum) and, apropos of abstaining from animal meats, by Augustine (Civitas Dei I, 20, and Confessions III, 18, where the problem of abstinence is dismissed as a pagan prejudice).

In Scholastic circles too the question of the souls of animals was not explored to any significant extent because, although in the wake of the Aristotelian tradition the notion that animals had a soul had never been called into question, they were merely granted, in addition to the vegetative soul, a sensitive soul. A sensitive soul may have instincts but it clearly lacks rationality or the ability to exercise free choice, as Thomas Aquinas concludes, precisely apropos of Chrysippus’s argument, in Summa Theologiae, I–II, 13, 2.¹⁵

Furthermore, a sensitive soul, unlike a rational soul, could not be immortal. Indeed Thomas, who holds that the rational (and immortal) soul is introduced by God into the fetus only when the brain is fully formed several months after conception (Summa Theologiae I, 90), came to the conclusion that even human embryos, which possess only a sensitive soul, could not participate in the resurrection of the flesh (Supplementum 80, 4).

This allowed Thomas to justify the slaughtering of animals for alimentary purposes: the inferior forms of life are ordered toward the survival of the superior forms, and therefore vegetables serve as food for animals and animals for man.¹⁶ The themes of Porphyry’s De abstinentia were alien to the medieval mentality, and the problem of the suffering of animals did not occasion much distress, given that human beings were sufficiently prone to suffering themselves.¹⁷

The fact that Saint Francis of Assisi could not only profess brotherly love toward animals but was also able (at least according to the powers attributed to him in Franciscan circles) to convince a wolf by reasoning with him, was evidence of a mystically provocative attitude at odds with the opinions officially shared by the philosophical and theological culture of the time.

So the thinkers of the Middle Ages do not appear to have been tempted by what we have termed “proto-evolutionist” tendencies. Even if we read ontogenesis in terms of philogenesis, the development from the vegetative soul to the sensitive soul and eventually to the rational soul was not seen as a continuum, and (given the Thomistic notions cited above) the transition in the fetus from the vegetative soul to the rational soul was, so to speak, a “catastrophe” attributable to direct divine intervention. Still, Rosier-Catach (2006) points out, in a passage from Dante’s Convivio (III, 7, 6), the idea of a more or less continuous gradation from the souls of the angels to the souls of humans to the souls of the animals, a gradation that strikes her as definitely “contrary to the teachings of the Church”:

And since in the intellectual order of the universe the ascent and descent are almost by continuous gradations from the lowest form to the highest and from the highest to the lowest, as we see in the order of beings capable of sensation; and since between the angelic nature, which is intellectual being, and the human nature there is no gradation but rather the one is, as it were, continuous with the other by the order of gradation; and since between the human soul and the most perfect soul of the brute animals there is also no intermediary gradation, so it is that we see many men so vile and in such a state of baseness that they seem to be almost nothing but beasts. Consequently it must be stated and firmly believed that there are some so noble and so lofty in nature that they are almost nothing but angels, for otherwise the human species would not be continuous in both directions, which is impossible.¹⁸

These observations did not prevent Dante from affirming in the De vulgari eloquentiae (I, 2, 5) that animals are incapable of speech and have no need of it (just as angels are endowed with an ineffable intellectual capacity, so that each one understands the thoughts of each of the others, or rather all of them read the thoughts of all of the others in the mind of God). Because they do not have individual but only specific passions, knowing their own they also know those of their congeners, and they have no interest in knowing those of animals of a different species. Likewise demons have no need of discourse because they all know reciprocally the degree of their own perfidiousness. (And we cannot even attempt to transform Dante into an evolutionist ante litteram simply because he permitted himself the rhetorical hyperbole of addressing his lady as an angel!)

The Middle Ages was not insensitive to the presence of animals. Indeed it was almost obsessively concerned with them in its bestiaries. But, rather than speaking (as occurs in the tradition of the fable), those animals are themselves the signs of a divine language. They “say” many things, but without being aware of it. This is because what they are or what they do become figures of something else. The lion signifies the Redemption by canceling its tracks, the elephant by attempting to lift its fallen companion, the serpent by sloughing off its old skin. Characters in a book written digito Dei (“with the finger of God”), the animals do not produce language, instead they themselves are words in a symbolic language. They are not observed in their actual behaviors, but in those attributed to them. They do not do what they do but what the bestiaries would have them do, so that they can express through their behavior something of which they are totally incognizant.

This is not all. As mere signs they are completely polyvocal; they serve to communicate different things according to the circumstances and properties highlighted. To confine ourselves to the dog, Rabanus Maurus (IX century) explains why and by virtue of what contradictory properties the dog may represent either the devil, the Jews, or the Gentiles,¹⁹ while in the anonymous eleventh-century Libro della natura degli animali or in the De Bestiis attributed to Hugh of Fouilloy the fact that it swallows its own vomit allows the dog to be chosen as a symbol of the repentant sinner, and in the Bestiario moralizzato di Gubbio (thirteenth–fourteenth century) the dog that dies defending its master becomes a symbol of Christ who died for our salvation.

Things are not so very different in the case of the Renaissance emblem books, which are far more dependent on the medieval bestiaries than is commonly thought. Some historians have seen this as a development of the theme of canine intelligence (see, for example, Höltgen 1998), given that, in the best-known source for the emblem books, Horapollon’s fifth-century Hieroglyphica (I, 39), the dog is singled out to represent a sacred scribe or a prophet or an embalmer or the spleen or the sense of smell or laughter or a sneeze (or a magistrate or a judge). But from this abundance of references it is evident that the dog (or any other animal for that matter) lends itself to many interpretations. In the texts that develop the theme in the Renaissance and Baroque periods, such as, for example, Picinelli’s Mondo simbolico (1653) or the various versions of Valeriano’s Hieroglyphica (between 1556 and 1626), the dog is represented as a symbol of magnanimity, generosity, courage, obedience, love of sacred literature, remembrance of things past, and memory of benefits received, while, at the same time, it is an emblem of sacrilege, stupidity, adulation, buffoonery, and impudence. In Alciati’s one hundred and sixty-fifth emblem “Inanis impetus” (“Antagonism that achieves nothing”), a dog gazes up at the moon as if in a mirror convinced there is another dog up there, and he bays, but the moon continues on its course, and the dog’s bay is carried away vainly on the wind. And in emblem 175 “Alius peccat, alius plectitur” (“One sins and another is punished”), the dog who bites the stone that has been thrown at him is incapable of harming his aggressor. Finally, in an allegory of Logic that appears in the various editions of Gregor Reisch’s Margarita philosophica we find two hunting dogs symbolizing the pursuit of knowledge, but one represents truth and the other falsehood—which does not offer much of a guarantee of canine sagacity.

Still, there is an area of discourse, for the most part indifferent to the universe of symbols, in which we encounter references to animal behavior based on nonfanciful observations, and this occurs in the discussions of language on the part of grammarians, to say nothing of philosophers and theologians, where we encounter canonical references, not merely to articulated language, but also to various forms of interjection or vocal emission, such as the moaning of the sick, the lowing of oxen, the chirping of chickens, the pseudo-language of magpies and parrots, and especially and most frequently the barking of the dog.

Encountering these references so frequently, we get the obvious impression that each author is borrowing from predecessors a well-worn topos, and is therefore simply repeating concepts handed down by tradition. The dog’s bark is a victim of the inertia of the auctoritates, while the examples migrate automatically from text to text.²⁰

And yet it pays to proceed cautiously in the case of medieval writers, who realized (if we may be allowed to cite another famous topos) that the nose of their auctoritas was made of wax and could be reshaped ad libitum. The first thing a student of the Middle Ages must do when coming across the same term and—to all intents and purposes—the same concept, is to suspect that this terminological identity masks or conceals an idea that is almost always novel and in each case different.

If, out of a taste (also medieval) for summing up systems of definitions in trees of the Porphyrian kind, one begins to construct (for every author who mentions the barking of the dog or similar utterances) taxonomies of the various species of utterances and sounds, one becomes aware that, depending on the author, the moaning of the sick and the barking of the dog occupy different positions. Which leads us to suspect that, when different authors spoke of the latratus canis, they had in mind a different zoosemiotic phenomenon, and that this difference in classification implied a difference in underlying semiotics.

Sometimes, to discover the soul of a philosophical system we must latch on to symptoms at its periphery. Which amounts to saying that sometimes we can better understand the Thomistic system through the implications it produces in a quaestio quodlibetalis than by starting with the Summae Theologiae (to which, however, we must obviously return). This may not be true in every case, but one thing that is sure is that an inquiry into the barking of the dog demonstrates that not only is there a medieval semiotics, but there are in fact many.

4.2.

Latratus Canis

4.2.1. Names and Signs

To account for the embarrassing position of the latratus canis in medieval linguistic theories we must bear in mind the fact that Greek semiotics, from the Corpus Hippocraticum to the Stoics, draws a clear distinction between a theory of names (in other words, of verbal language) and a theory of signs. The signs (semeia) are natural phenomena, which today we call symptoms or indices, whose relationship to what they signify is based on the mechanism of inference: if such and such a symptom, then such and such a malady; if this woman produces milk, then she has given birth; where there’s smoke, there’s fire. Words, on the other hand, bear a different relationship to the things they name or the concept they signify, and this relationship is the one sanctioned by the Aristotelian theory of definition. It is a relationship of equivalency or mutual substitutability.

Now, these two semiotic lines begin to merge in the Stoics, and this fusion will be explicitly recognized by Augustine (in the De magistro, in the De doctrina christiana, and in the De dialectica).²¹ In Augustine a science of the signum as the supreme genus takes shape, of which both symptoms and words, the mimetic gestures of actors and the blare of the military trumpet, are species. Still, not even in Augustine is the dichotomy definitively resolved between the relationship of inference, which binds a natural sign to the thing it is a sign of, and the relationship of equivalence, which binds a linguistic term to the concept it signifies or the thing it designates.

By now medieval semiotics is aware of both lines of thought, but is not yet fully capable of perfecting their unification. This is why, as we shall see, the latratus canis will occupy a different position in different classifications, depending on whether they are classifications of signs in general or of voces. Because the classification of signa is Stoic in origin, while the classification of voces is Aristotelian.

4.2.2. The Stoic Influence: Augustine

In his De doctrina christiana (II, 1–4), Augustine proposes his famous definition of the sign. A sign is something which, over and above its sensible aspect, brings to mind something different from itself, like the spoor left by an animal, the smoke from which one infers the presence of fire, the moan that indicates pain, the bugle that communicates orders to a troop of soldiers. Signs are therefore either natural or given. Signa naturalia are those that make something manifest independently of any intention, like the smoke that indicates fire or the tracks left by the animal or even the anger that shows in a face without the angry person wishing to show it. The signa data on the other hand are those emitted in order to communicate the movements of the mind or the contents of one’s thought. We only signify in order to produce in the mind of someone else what we already have in our own. But, on the one hand, what is in the mind of the person emitting the sign is not necessarily a concept; it can also be a psychological state or a sensation; on the other hand, the sign produces something in the mind of the addressee, not necessarily a concept. This is why Augustine places among the signa data both the words of Scripture (in addition of course to human words) and the signs produced by animals, and, in a humane touch, he evokes for us not only the utilitarian relationship between the rooster and the hen in search of food but also the cooing of the turtle dove calling for her mate.²²

He leaves us no choice, then, but to attribute to him the classification shown in Figure 4.1.

Figure 4.1

Except that at this point Augustine realizes that he has gone too far, and in his final paragraph he corrects himself, leaving in suspense the question as to whether the call of the dove or the groans of the sick are truly to be considered phenomena of signification. If it were not for this correction, the “language” of the dove would have been firmly situated alongside the words of Holy Scripture. And since it is the latter that he is concerned with, he chooses to shelve the other issue for the time being.

4.2.3. The Stoic Influence: Abelard

One solution to the riddle of the dove will make its appearance (albeit somewhat problematically) with Abelard. In his Dialectica (I, iii, 1), the classification he espouses (which in any case does not depart from the Augustinian distinction) can be reduced to the Aristotelian-Boethian model (to be discussed later): meaningful voces may be divided into those than are meaningful naturaliter and those whose meaning proceeds ex impositione or ad placitum (“by convention”); and among the natural utterances he cites the barking of the dog (as an expression of anger).²³

But in his Ingredientibus, another opposition is associated with that between naturaliter and ex impositione, namely, that between significativa and significantia.²⁴

In order for a word to be significativa it must be an institutio. This institutio is not a convention (like the impositio); instead it is a decision that lies behind both the impositio and the natural significativeness, and could come very close to intentionality. Words signify in fact by means of the institution of human will, which orders them ad intellectum constituere, that is, to produce concepts. Seeing that by his day the barking of the dog must have become a canonical citation, Abelard declares that it is significant of anger and pain, just like a human expression designed to communicate something, because it is instituted by nature, in other words by God, to express this meaning. Thus, the bark can be distinguished from those phenomena that are merely significantia, that is, symptomatic, such as, for example, that same bark that, heard from a distance, allows us merely to conclude that there is a dog somewhere over yonder.

If a man, then, hears a bark and infers that there is a dog present, this is a symptom being used, by inference, to draw a signification, but the fact that it becomes significant does not imply that it has been instituted as significative. On the other hand, when the dog barks, it does so to express a specific concept (anger or pain or rejoicing), in other words, in order to constituere intellectum (produce concepts) in our minds. Abelard does not say that the dog does so of its own free will: the dog is acted upon by another will, belonging to the natural order (a sort, we might say, of agent will).²⁵ But it is still an intentional agent. Abelard is quite clear: a thing is significative because of the act of will that produces it as such, not because of the fact that it produces meanings.

Accordingly, Abelard’s taxonomy should be translated as in Figure 4.2.

Figure 4.2

Apropos of which, it could be said that where there is institutio, there is some form of code, a correspondence (natural or conventional) between signans and signatum, which cannot be simply a matter of conjecture. But the voces significantes remain a matter for conjecture and therefore inference, and in this sense Abelard sticks to the Stoic distinction that distinguishes between speech act and index or cue.

4.2.4. Boethius’s Reading of

De interpretatione

16a

This distinction, however, is not so evident in the semiotics clearly derived from Aristotle. Now, if we are to appreciate most of the discussions that follow, we must take as our point of departure, as the Middle Ages did, De interpretatione 16a, where, with the purpose of defining nouns and verbs, Aristotle makes a number of statements about signs in general. Let me attempt a translatio media, which, while taking into account our current versions, endeavors above all to give an account of those aspects that particularly struck the translators and interpreters of the Middle Ages:

The sounds of the voice (ta en te phone) are symbols (symbola) of the affections (pathematon) of the soul, just as the letters of the alphabet (grammata) are symbols of the things that are in the voice (en te phone). And as the letters of the alphabet are not the same for all men, in the same way neither are the sounds. Nevertheless, sounds and letters are basically signs (semeia) of the affections of the soul, which are the same for everyone, and likewise things (pragmata), of which the affections of the soul are similar images (omoiomata), are the same for everyone. (16a, 1–10)

A name is a sound endowed with meaning (phone semantike) by convention (kata syntheken). (16a, 20–21)

Lo Piparo (2003) has proposed a radically different interpretation of this passage,²⁶ but in the present instance we are concerned, not with the philological exegesis of Aristotle, but with seeing how the Middle Ages read this text; and the current interpretation was that what we have on the one hand are things, which impress their images upon the soul (which constitutes their species), while on the other we have the linguistic symbols (sonorous and graphemic) that refer to the affections of the soul, or mental images, ad placitum. But, if this is how the text is to be understood, we ought to draw another conclusion from it: that sounds and letters (independently of their meaning) are also indices (semeia) of the affections of the soul. An idea that may appear banal in itself (like saying that if someone speaks it is because they have something in their heads that they want to say), but which becomes less banal when we see the advantage that Thomas derives from it indirectly, when he lets it be understood that we do not recognize that man is a rational animal through direct knowledge of his essence, but because he manifests his rationality though language.

Boethius’s Latin translation, upon which medieval thinkers will base themselves, runs as follows (my emphasis):

Sunt ergo ea quae sunt in voce, earum quae sunt in anima passionum notae; et ea quae scribuntur, eorum quae sunt in voce. Et quemadmodum nec litterae omnibus eaedem, sic nec eaedem voces; quorum autem hae primorum notae sunt, eaedem omnibus passiones animae sunt; et quorum hae similitudines, res etiam eaedem.…

Nomen ergo est vox significativa secundum placitum sine tempore, cuius pars est significativa separata … Secundum placitum vero, quoniam naturaliter nominum nihil est, sed quando fit nota; nam designant et inlitterati soni, ut ferarum, quorum nihil est nomen.²⁷

Boethius, then, translates with the same word, nota, both of the Aristotelian terms, symbolon and semeion. What Aristotle meant to say was that the twofold relationship word/concept and letters of the alphabet/words is symbolic, or, as the Middle Ages will interpret it, is based on convention (and for this reason varies from one language to another), whereas the relationship between concept and thing is iconic.

But if we translate semeion with nota, and understand it to mean “sign” in the contemporary meaning of the word (the sense in which we also speak of a linguistic sign), what Aristotle appears to be saying is that words are symbols and signs of concepts, and that consequently the two terms are synonyms. In addition to leaving in abeyance the idea, previously referred to, that Aristotle was saying that the fact that words are spoken is an index, proof, or symptom of the fact that concepts exist in the mind of the speaker, it also leaves in abeyance the whole universe of indiciary signs, and in this sense it poses a number of serious problems that we will come to grips with in due time.

For the moment let us consider a telling example. When Aristotle says, in De interpretatione (16a 19–20, 26–29)—this at least was the way he was read in the Middle Ages—that a name is a vox significativa by convention, and that no sound is a name for natural reasons but is such only when it becomes, by convention, a symbol, he adds that inarticulate sounds, like those made by the beasts, manifest (delousi) something, though none of them is a name.

Aristotle does not say that the sounds made by the beasts signify or designate something, he says they manifest it, as a symptom makes manifest its cause. But the Middle Ages, as we shall see, has no trouble translating the Greek delousi with the Latin significant. Boethius’s translation, by rendering symbol and index with the same term nota, obliterated the distinction and favored their identification.²⁸ But the Middle Ages will have no problem interpreting the sounds made by animals as voces significativae, even though not the same as nomina (and various commentators explain that in such cases Aristotle is not talking about voces but about soni, because not all animals, on account of the structure of their phonatory organs, can utter voces, and many simply produce sounds).²⁹

The barking of the dog, which means that the dog is angry, appears in Boethius as an example of a vox significativa, though not ad placitum, but naturaliter: “canum latratus iram significat canum”—and, by the same token, voces naturaliter significativae are also the moans of the sick.³⁰

And so, under the genus voces significativae we find a species that according to Aristotle should have belonged among the semeia. In this category, Boethius and those who follow him lump together, along with the barking of the dog, the gemitus infirmorum, the whinny of the horse and the sounds made by those animals that have no vox but have “tantum sonitu quodam concrepant.”³¹

Boethius assuredly understands that these voces signify naturaliter, because they evidently reveal their cause according to the (symptomatic) model of inference, but, having obfuscated the distinction between the doctrine of indices and the doctrine of names, he neglects an important fact: that natural sounds do not have an emitter, unless, as sometimes occurs in certain processes of divination, they are interpreted as if they had been emitted intentionally by a supernatural agent. The moaning of the sick and the barking of the dog, however, have an emitter, though we are not in a position to affirm that the emission was deliberate. But Boethius also singles out the whinny of the horse: “hinnitus quoque equorum sepe alterius equi consuetudinem quaerit,”³² when the horse whinnies to call another horse, and hence whinnies with a definite intention. In fact, in the same passage, Boethius says that “ferarum quoque mutorum animalium voces interdum aliqua significatione praeditas esse perspicimus.” We are dealing, then, with voces endowed with some meaning. But endowed by whom (before the advent of Abelard’s idea of an “active will”)? By the beast emitting them or by the human hearing them?

Figure 4.3

We can immediately see that the latratus canis (and all the other sounds animals make) may enjoy a double status: on the one hand the dog speaks to other dogs and on the other the dog speaks to humans. But in the second case, the alternative is still twofold: either humans understand the dog’s bark because they have acquired a habit that makes them apt at interpreting symptoms (like the sailor who has learned how to interpret the signs in the sky), or else humans have acquired a habit that makes them apt at interpreting the language the dog uses to talk to them. These are two distinct zoosemiotic problems (while yet another problem remains on the back burner: if and in what way the dog understands the language the human uses to address him).

We must conclude, then, that with Boethius a classification of voces is inaugurated which has two characteristics: it melds together the Stoic classification of signs (as voces significativae naturaliter) and the Aristotelian classification of voces (as nomina ad placitum), and it leaves in abeyance the problem of the intentionality of the utterance of the vox.

Consequently, this classification—consolidating a series of basically analogous positions taken by a number of authors, from Boethius to Peter of Spain, Lambert of Auxerre, Garland the Compotist, and others—would appear as in Figure 4.3.³³

4.2.5. The Thomist Reading of

De interpretatione

16a

Thomas Aquinas will not depart from this classification, though his taxonomy is more complex. Taking into account the remarks appearing passim in his commentary on the De interpretatione, whereas, at IV, 38 et seq., he seems to concern himself with a classification of the voces, reserving the appellation signum only for the voces significativae, in IV, 46, on the other hand, where he attempts to explain why Aristotle, in speaking of animal sounds, used the term soni and not voces (it was necessary, Thomas explains, to take into consideration the sounds of animals which, not being furnished with lungs, are not capable of uttering vocal sounds), he suggests the possibility of a more detailed classification, which considers the sonus as a genus.

The Aristotelian translation available to Thomas was not yet that of William of Moerbeke (who was shrewd enough to translate symbolon and semeion correctly as two distinct notions), but basically that of Boethius, whose Latin term for both semiotic phenomena is nota (which the commentary then proceeds to read as the equivalent of signum).

Bearing in mind the probable sources he was relying on,³⁴ his classification could be summed up as in Figure 4.4.

This classification betrays a number of influences. In the first instance, along the lines of Saint Augustine, Thomas calls every meaningful vox a signum. But, in II, 19, he speaks of a signum also apropos of the military trumpet (tuba), which is evidently not a case of sonus vocalis. It would appear, then, that a signum for him was any case of meaningful utterance, vocal or nonvocal. But, having translated the two Aristotelian terms with signum = nota, he takes no account of the inferential nature of the Stoic semeia, ignores every type of index except sonus, and places evident indices like the moaning of the sick and the sounds made by animals among the meaningful voces.

4.2.6. Transcribability and Articulation

In the second place there appears in Thomas a distinction between voces litteratae and articulatae and voces illitteratae and non articulatae. The opposition litteratae/illitteratae appears to go back directly to the text of Aristotle, where he speaks of utterances that are agrammatoi (like those of the animals), that is, which cannot be transcribed with letters of the alphabet. Which would explain why blitris (a typical example used by the Stoics and subsequently in the Middle Ages, along with buba and bufbaf, of vocal utterances that, though transcribable, signify nothing) appears among the voces litteratae, though it is not meaningful. The problem is rather that of defining what is meant by articulata (with its opposite non articulata).

Figure 4.4

It is unclear whether articulation concerns the sounds only or their graphemic transcription as well, and Aristotle’s texts are not explicit on this issue.³⁵ In his commentary on the De interpretatione, Boethius (col. 395 D) appears determined to unite the two types of articulation. Some ideas become clearer if we go on to read Priscian:³⁶ we recognize, in fact, a line of thought that is found in the grammatical tradition, and also in authors like Vincent of Beauvais.³⁷ A vox articulata for Priscian is one that is “copulata cum aliquo sensu mentis eius qui loquitur,” and utterances are no longer classified according to a binary taxonomy, but following the matrix represented in Figure 4.5.

Figure 4.5

This matrix presents two distinct problems. The lesser problem concerns its internal coherence, given that the croaking of the frog appears to be transcribable in letters of the alphabet—see Aristophanes’s brekekex koax koax—while the lowing of the ox is not. But the classification probably represents current linguistic usage (simply put, that it was more customary to spell out the croaking of the frog than the lowing of the ox), and Priscian was likely referring to a panoply of examples handed down to him by the Greek tradition. The second problem concerns Thomas’s solution. If Thomas is following Priscian, it is hard to understand why the difference between articulation and nonarticulation appears to distinguish nonmeaningful utterances (non significativa), while it is absent from the branch devoted to meaningful utterances (significativa)—in which the names are articulate and lettered, but not the animal sounds.

The fact is that behind this complex of questions there lurk a number of semiotic problems that are by no means negligible. Thomas’s classification is anticipated by Ammonius.³⁸

After he has made it clear that for him being litterata (in other words, transcribable in letters) is the same thing, in the case of a vox, as being articulata, Ammonius seems to place the difference articulata / non articulata twice under two different genera, so that his classification can only be transcribed in the form of a matrix, as was the case for Priscian’s (Figure 4.6).

Thomas (In 1. De Int. Exp. IV, 38) appears to take up only the first part of Ammonius’s suggestion, and he writes: “Additur autem prima differentia, scilicet significativa, ad differentiam quarumcumque vocum non significantium, sive sit vox litterata et articulata, sicut “blitris,” sive non litterata et non articulata, sicut sibilus per nihilo factus.” Why does Thomas seem to be embarrassed by a classification that would suggest a matrix rather than a tree?

Figure 4.6

The problem seems to lie with the very nature of a tree (of Porphyrian inspiration), which proceeds by genera, species, and specific differences. In other words, the problem arises when, starting from a series of definitions given in discursive form, one attempts to regiment them in the form of a Porphyrian tree (something Thomas did not do, though it was precisely because he did not do so that the problem facing him did not become evident). As we demonstrated in Chapter 1 apropos of the Porphyrian tree, in order to give an account of any organization of the universe (even, as in the present case, a classification of signs and voces), the same pair of differences ought to be reproduced over and over again under different genera. If Thomas had followed this procedure, the difference litterata/illitterata, like that between articulata and inarticulata, should have appeared under two distinct genera (Figure 4.7).

Figure 4.7

But, once he had accepted the principle that the same difference may be placed under two different genera, he ought to have reproduced it also under the signs that are meaningful ex institutione, where tuba or trumpet appears, seeing that—according to Aristotle, De anima 420b, 5–8—we have articulability among musical sounds too (to say nothing of their transcribability in musical notation).

In that case, the tree-like structure would have given way to a system of interconnected nodes, which, as Chapter 1 suggested, Thomas may have caught a glimpse of but could not admit. Independently, however, of these considerations, what is clear is that the contradictions of Thomas’s solution stem from the fact that he is playing a double (and irreconcilable) game. One is grammatical, and it required that the voces (lettered or not) be distinguished according to their articulatory possibilities—and this is what Priscian, as a good grammarian, did. The other was semantic, and it required that the difference be posited between meaningful and nonmeaningful voces. The two taxonomies could not coexist. Thomas appears convincing when he speaks of one issue rather than the other, but he reveals all his uncertainty when he attempts (albeit motivated simply by a desire for taxonomical clarity) to put the two discourses together into a single system.

At this point, we could leave Thomas to his fate, gratified by the fact that once again our pursuit of the barking dog has succeeded in revealing the weaknesses or contradictions of a system. At most, we could point out that Thomas does not use articulata in the same sense as Priscian (that is, “endowed with meaning”), but in the same sense as Ammonius, and that consequently blitris is an example of a vox non significativa that nonetheless has a phonetic articulation and at the same time can be transcribed alphabetically. But it is precisely this observation that leads us to wonder why Priscian (and the grammarians who follow him) attributed to articulata a connection with meaning. Nota bene, it is not that they try to meld a taxonomy of articulations with one of signification, but that they take practically for granted that there is a connection, which they do not however explore, between articulation and meaning. In the first instance we could argue that they assumed that one articulates only to express something—and this was the hypothesis that was made in Latratus canis 1989.

In fact, when we go back to Ammonius’s commentary, we see that he makes explicit and implicit reference to Plato’s Cratylus, suggesting that there is a close link between articulatio and significatio. In Plato’s dialogue, Socrates expounds the notion according to which whoever invented the first names created them in imitation of things, endeavoring to reproduce, through the coordination of letters and syllables, their nature. In other words, there would be a relationship of an iconic type between the phonological structure of the signans and the ontological structure of the signatum. A theory very close to this is found among the Stoics.³⁹ So it becomes comprehensible why Priscian, heir to a grammatical tradition with its roots in Stoicism, goes so far as to identify the articulatio of the vox with its significatio, followed in this by all medieval grammarians,⁴⁰ while, in the logical-philosophical tradition (untouched by the grammatical tradition), the articulatio has nothing to do with the meaning, but concerns the litteratio, and hence the possibility of the written translation of the sound.⁴¹

However that may be, it is obvious that among the grammarians the barking of the dog was on track for an unhappy ending. All the grammarian is interested in are the sounds articulated by humans, observant, precisely, of a grammar, in order to express meanings. The sounds made by animals are of no interest. Accordingly, in the texts of the grammarians the barking of the dog is destined to occupy an increasingly marginal position. For, if the first hypothesis (the influence of the Cratylus) were to be valid, then, given that the meaningfulness of the name is the consequence of an original relationship of iconicity, hence the articulatio, the voces of the animals, by common consent neither articulate or articulable, would not represent a subject of great interest. Animals are not aware that nomina sunt consequentia rerum, and they are not capable of imitating the nature of things.⁴²

4.2.7. Back to Thomas

Clearly, at this point, we may skip the tradition of the grammarians. What interests us instead is the tradition of the philosophers, who continue to grant the dog and his bark a position of honor in the classification of signs. This is also because the philosophers, in addition to the classifications they elaborate, following the lead of the De interpretatione, are constantly induced to make supplementary observations. Take Thomas, who, in Sententia libri Politicorum (I, I/b), comes back once more to the difference between human and animal voces. Since, he affirms, nature never does anything gratuitously but always has a definite purpose, it is obvious that, although various animals possess a “voice,” only humans possess a locutio and, though there may be animals capable of repeating human words, we cannot say that they talk, because they do not understand what they are saying, but utter the words they have learned out of mere habit. Animal “voices” serve to express sadness or delight and other passions (and once again the barking of the dog is cited and the roar of the lion: “et haec sibi invicem significant per aliquas naturales voces, sicut leo per rugitum et canis per latratum”), while humans, instead of these voces, use interjections. But only human locutio is able to signify things useful and harmful, just and unjust, good and evil.⁴³

Here Thomas takes a step forward. He recognizes that, just as humans have ways of signifying to each other, alternately and intentionally, sadness and delight, the same is true of animals, and he thus touches on a problem that will be treated at greater length by Roger Bacon, who will distinguish between the moan that the sick man utters inadvertently and the interjection that he utters intentionally, following a certain linguistic convention, to signify the same pain, in however conceptually imperfect a manner.⁴⁴

But, in this way, within the same Thomist system, the latratus canis changes position, as if, halfway between the voces significativae naturaliter (among which we find the gemitus) and the voces ad placitum (where we find spoken language), we were to locate an intermediate zone, in which humans produce (paralinguistically, we would say today) interjections, while dogs bark. In fact, in this revised classification, the real difference between human and canine language lies not in the opposition intentional/unintentional (vaguely touched upon, but basically eluded), and not only in that between natural and ad placitum, but in the opposition between the interjection and the ability of human language to express abstractions by means of which humans set up domum et civitatem (“ergo homo est naturale animal domesticum et civile”)—an affirmation that Thomas takes up from Aristotle’s Politics 1253 at 9–30, where Aristotle opposes human language, capable of producing concepts and abstractions, to the inarticulate sounds of animals, expressive merely of pleasure or pain.

4.2.8. Roger Bacon

Not unmindful of Augustine’s provocation, enter at this point Roger Bacon. The classification of signs outlined in Bacon’s De signis strikes us in many ways as syncretistic and as yet unresolved. The eccentricities of this classification find their explanation in a project whose results will be seen in later semiotics, especially in Ockham. Briefly, up until Bacon, thanks to the Aristotelian vulgate, words signify the passions of the soul (concepts, universal species), species bear an iconic relationship to things, and words, through the mediation of species, serve to name things (nominantur singularia, sed universalia significantur, “they name individual things while they signify universals”). With the De signis, on the other hand, words begin to signify directly individual things, of which the species intelligibiles are the mental counterpart. But the link between words and species becomes secondary and is reduced to a purely symptomatic relationship. Bacon has grasped the difference between symbola and semeia in De interpretatione 16a but, on the basis of a philologically correct reading, he elaborates a philosophically unfaithful reading. In other words, he erases the fact that for Aristotle words may be symptoms of the passions of the mind, but in the first instance they signify them directly, and he concludes that words are symptoms of the species that are formed in the mind.⁴⁵ We have endeavored to reconstruct Bacon’s classification in Figure 4.8.

In commenting on this figure, let us say at once that that the “natural signs” ought to correspond to those of Augustine, which are produced without any intention, but it is unclear on what grounds Bacon distinguishes between those of the first and those of the third type. It would appear that, whereas in the third type we have a clear relationship of cause and effect, in those of the first type we have simply a relationship of concomitance among events (in the case of those classified as necessary the concomitance is certain, while for the probable ones it is uncertain). But it remains obscure why the ground being wet as a probable sign of a previous rain shower is not classified among the vestigia. Still more embarrassing is the curious collocation of the imagines (intentionally produced by man) among the natural signs. Bacon explains this with the fact that what is made intentionally is the object (the statue), while the resemblance between the statue and the real person is due to a certain homology between the form of the signans and that of the signatum.⁴⁶ What interests us more is the classification of the signs produced by an intention of the soul, where Bacon perceives an intention even in the case of sounds emitted instinctively, without any intervention on the part of reason or even will, as an immediate movement of the sensitive soul (such as the moaning of the sick and animal noises).

Figure 4.8

Now, the signs ordered by the soul, but without rational deliberation or election of the will, are said to function naturaliter. They have, however, nothing to do with the natural signs. The latter were called natural with reference to nature as substance; the former are called natural because they are set in motion by a movement of nature. Be that as it may, the distinction is clear: the signa naturalia do not appear as the consequence of an intention, on the part of either humans or animals, while the moaning of the sick and the barking of the dog have their origin in a movement of the sensitive soul that tends to express what the animal (human or no) is feeling. And so in this classification the barking of the dog, without being placed alongside Holy Scripture and separated from the mourning of the dove, as it was in Augustine, is not a mere symptom either.

Furthermore, it is worth pointing out that the crow of the rooster appears twice in this classification. There is a cockcrow that is a sign of what time of day it is and a cockcrow that is instead a linguistic act, even if we do not happen to understand its purport.

When Bacon compares these two cases he uses a different terminology. When the cockcrow appears among the signs ordinata ab anima, it is referred to as “cantus galli,” while when it appears as a symptom it is referred to as “gallum cantare”: “cantus galli nichil proprie nobis significat tamquam vox significativa, sed gallum cantare significant nobis horas.” The natural sign is not the cockcrow itself, but the fact that the cock crows (the Stoics would have called it an incorporeal). Now, in the De signis, whom the cock is crowing to (whether to other cocks or to humans) is not specified, but the same theme is picked up again in the Sumulae Dialectices.⁴⁷

Here Bacon is quite clear: a significant vox is the one by which any animal can communicate with another animal of the same species, in other words there are voces significativae naturaliter that all members of a species understand, and others (the ones that are ad placitum) that are understood only by subgroups of the same human species, as is the case with articulate languages. That animals understand each other can be seen from their behavior, as when, for example, the mother hen warns her chicks of the threat of the hawk. So the rooster speaks with different words according to the circumstances and is understood by the other members of his species, just as the ass is understood by the ass and the lion by the lion. All humans need is a little training, and they too will be able to understand the language of the beasts. As will be further clarified by Pseudo-Marsilius of Inghen:⁴⁸ the dog certainly barks in order to signify something, and it is irrelevant whether everyone understands what he means, it is enough that those who understand the characteristics and habits of dogs understand.

This said, the table of zoosemiotic situations has been fully explored: the dog who speaks to the dog, the dog whose bark man interprets because he knows the dog’s habits and therefore his language, and even the animal who speaks human words, like the magpie or the parrot (but this is a case of learned behavior and mechanical execution on the animal’s part, and the problem has nothing to do with a theory of signs).⁴⁹

With Bacon’s espousal of the zoosemiotic revaluation of an Augustine who is closer to Greek culture, the barking dog definitively joins the ranks of those who, in one way or another, express themselves, because the behavior of animals who twitter, howl, squeak, and roar as they go about their associative lives will henceforth be regarded with a greater sensitivity to the facts of nature.⁵⁰

It is no accident that we are now entering a period in which the figurative arts too have progressed, in their representation of nature, from the stylizations of the Romanesque to the realism of the Gothic.

Exit the allegorical animal of the bestiary. From now on, whimpers, barks, whinnies, and roars ring out in the symbolic forest inhabited by the beasts, who now say whatever they feel like saying and not what the Physiologus would have them say, thereby refusing to become quasi liber et pictura and just being themselves.⁵¹

The second part of this essay chapter incorporates a research project that first appeared under my name, together with those of Roberto Lambertini, Costantino Marmo, and Andrea Tabarroni. The project took shape in a seminar on the history of semiotics at the University of Bologna (during the academic year 1982–1983). After being presented at the Settimane di Studio del Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo (see Spoleto 1985), it was published in English in Eco and Marmo, On the Medieval Theory of Signs (1989). For the present book, I have rewritten it, taking into account contributions that have appeared more recently, unburdening it of a number of quotations and erudite notes, and changing the order of the sections. Our original research project identified the classifications in order of complexity, regardless of whether they had appeared before or after one another, whereas in this version I have followed the chronological order, at least within the two traditions—Stoic-Augustinian and Aristotelian-Boethian—because what most concerned me was to underscore the conflict, continually latent, between the correlational and inferential notions of the sign. Hence, while I refer the reader to the original version (cited passim throughout these following notes as Latratus canis 1989) for a more detailed discussion, the other three authors are not to be considered responsible for the present draft. It should be understood, however, that, without their collaboration, my own ideas on the latratus canis would have remained as inarticulate as the gemitus infirmorum. [Translator’s note: The essay “On Animal Language in the Medieval Classification of Signs,” co-authored by Umberto Eco, Roberto Lambertini, Costantino Marmo, and Andrea Tabarroni, first appeared in English in Versus a special number (38–39 [1984]: 3–38) of the periodical Versus. Quaderni di Studi Semiotici dedicated to Medieval Semiotics, and subsequently in the symposium edited by Eco and Marmo, On the Medieval Theory of Signs (1989: pp. 3–41); the English version appears to have been a collective effort by the authors, revised by Shona Kelly. For a partial summary of their conclusions, see also the chapter “Interpreting Animals,” in Eco’s The Limits of Interpretation (1990b, pp. 111–122)—a reprint, with negligible editorial corrections, of the article “Latratus canis” that appeared in English, attributed to Eco alone, in the periodical Tijdschrift voor Filosofie 47 (1985): 3–14. Between these two publications, another similarly abbreviated version, close but not identical to the last two mentioned, and once again recognized as the fruit of a collaboration, was included in a symposium on semiotics, namely, Umberto Eco, Roberto Lambertini, Costantino Marmo, Andrea, and Tabarroni (1986), “‘Latratus canis’ or: the Dog’s Barking,” in John Deely, Brooke Williams, and Felicia E. Kruse (eds.), Frontiers in Semiotics (1986, pp. 63–73). What follows is a new English translation of Eco’s Italian text, itself revised for inclusion in the present volume. It is somewhat misleading that Eco chooses to refer in the notes that follow to the original collaborative article, “On Animal Language in the Medieval Classification of Signs,” as Latratus canis.]

1. The translation is from Virgil (1999: 66–67).

2. [Translator’s note: The corresponding passage in the Advancement of Learning (1604) runs as follows: “so that the fable and fiction of Scylla seemeth to be a lively image of this kind of philosophy or knowledge; which was transformed into a comely virgin for the upper parts; but then candida succinctam latrantibus inguina monstris (“with howling monsters girt about her white waist,” Virgil, Eclogue VI, 75), so the generalities of the schoolmen are for a while good and proportionable; but then when you descend into their distinctions and decisions, instead of a fruitful womb for the use and benefit of man’s life, they end in monstrous altercations and barking questions.” The dichotomous image may coincidentally remind us of Shakespeare’s Lear (without the barking): “Down from the waist they are Centaurs, / Though women all above: / But to the girdle do the gods inherit, / Beneath is all the fiends.’ ”]

3. Seneca, Ad Lucilium Epistulae Morales, with an English translation by Richard M. Gummere, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1917, vol. III, pp. 397–411 [“On Instinct in Animals”].

4. On the history of these two versions, see Giuseppe Girgenti, in his commentary on the Italian translation of Porphyry’s De abstinentia (Astinenza dagli animali, Milano, Bompiani, 2005, n. 22 to Book III).

5. Sextus Empricus, Outlines of Pyrrhonism, I, 69, trans. R. G. Bury, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 1955, pp. 41–43.

6. As Sextus himself explains in Outlines of Pyrrhonism II, 158 (p. 253), the fifth nondemonstrable argument “deduces from a disjunctive premiss and the opposite of one of its clauses the other clause,” as for example “Either it is day or it is night; but it is not night; therefore it is day.” Naturally, in the version with the crossroads (as opposed to the one with the ditch) what we have is a “multiple syllogism.”

7. [Translator’s note: Philo’s Greek original survives only in a sixth-century Armenian translation. This and the previous quote are from Abraham Terian, Philonis Alexandrini De Animalibus: The Armenian Text with an Introduction, Translation, and Commentary, Chico, California, Scholars Press, 1981, pp. 87 and 103–4. The English translator criticizes the “syntactical awkwardness” of the Armenian text, and his own translation is in fact quite unidiomatic. In our transcription of the first citation, Terian’s term “shaft,” which would seem to indicate a vertical cavity, has been replaced by “ditch,” indicating a horizontal barrier, more in keeping with the context.]

8. See Plutarch’s Moralia, XII, Trans. by Harold Cherniss and William Helmbold, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 1957, pp. 309–479. The same volume (pp. 487–533) contains the dialogue Bruta animalia ratione uti mentioned below.

9. Aelian, On the Characteristics of Animals, With an English Translation by A. F. Schofield, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 1958–9, vol. II, Book VI, para. 59 (pp. 81–83).

10. Porphyry, On Abstinence from Killing Animals, trans. by Gillian Clark, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000, p. 85.

11. Pliny, Natural History, vol. III (Books VIII–XI), translated by H. Rackham, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1940, pp. 101–103.

12. See, for example, Columella: “Now, as I promised in the earlier part of my treatise, I will speak of the dumb guardians of the flocks, though it is wrong to speak of the dog as a dumb guardian; for what human being so clearly or so vociferously gives warning of the presence of a wild beast or of a thief as does the dog by its barking? What servant is more attached to his master than is a dog? What companion more faithful? What more wakeful night-watchman can be found? Lastly, what more steadfast avenger or defender?” (De re rustica, books V–IX, trans. E. S. Forster and Edward Heffner, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1954, pp. 305–307). C. Julius Solinus, too, addresses the barking of the dog in his Collectanea rerum mirabilium VI.

13. Stephen A. Barney, W. J. Lewis, J. A. Beach, Oliver Berghof with the collaboration of Muriel Hall, The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006, p. 253. Likewise, see also Rabanus Maurus, De rerum naturis, VIII De bestiis.

14. “Canis vero ubi vestigium leporis cervive reperit, et ad diverticulum semitae venerit, et quoddam viarum compitum, quod partes in plurimas scinditur, ambians singularum semitarum exordium, tacitus secum ipse pertractat, velut syllogisticam vocem sagicitate colligendi ordoris demittens. Aut certe, inquit, in hanc partem deflexit, aut in illam. Aut certe in humc se anfractum contulit, sed nec in stam, nec in illam ingressus est, superest igitur ut in istam partem se contulerit, et sic falsitate repudiata in veritatem prolabitur” (De bestiis, III, 11, PL 177 86d). A similar text from the same period is found in the Cambridge Bestiary, except that the dog is pursuing, not a hare, but a deer.

15. “It would seem that irrational animals are able to choose. For choice ‘is the desire of certain things on account of an end,’ as stated in Ethics iii, 2, 3. But irrational animals desire something on account of an end: since they act for an end, and from desire. Therefore choice is in irrational animals. Further, the very word electio (choice) seems to signify the taking of something in preference to others. But irrational animals take something in preference to others: thus we can easily see for ourselves that a sheep will eat one grass and refuse another. Therefore choice is in irrational animals. Further, according to Ethics vi, 12, ‘it is from prudence that a man makes a good choice of means.’ But prudence is found in irrational animals: hence it is said in the beginning of Metaph. i, 1 that ‘those animals which, like bees, cannot hear sounds, are prudent by instinct.’ We see this plainly, in wonderful cases of sagacity manifested in the works of various animals, such as bees, spiders, and dogs. For a hound in following a stag, on coming to a crossroad, tries by scent whether the stag has passed by the first or the second road: and if he find that the stag has not passed there, being thus assured, takes to the third road without trying the scent; as though he were reasoning by way of exclusion, arguing that the stag must have passed by this way, since he did not pass by the others, and there is no other road. Therefore it seems that irrational animals are able to choose. On the contrary, Gregory of Nyssa [*Nemesius, De Nat. Hom. xxxiii.] says that ‘children and irrational animals act willingly but not from choice.’ Therefore choice is not in irrational animals. “I answer that, Since choice is the taking of one thing in preference to another it must of necessity be in respect of several things that can be chosen. Consequently in those things which are altogether determinate to one there is no place for choice. Now the difference between the sensitive appetite and the will is that, as stated above (Q[1], A[2], ad 3), the sensitive appetite is determinate to one particular thing, according to the order of nature; whereas the will, although determinate to one thing in general, viz. the good, according to the order of nature, is nevertheless indeterminate in respect of particular goods. Consequently choice belongs properly to the will, and not to the sensitive appetite which is all that irrational animals have. Wherefore irrational animals are not competent to choose. Not every desire of one thing on account of an end is called choice: there must be a certain discrimination of one thing from another. And this cannot be except when the appetite can be moved to several things. “An irrational animal takes one thing in preference to another, because its appetite is naturally determinate to that thing. Wherefore as soon as an animal, whether by its sense or by its imagination, is offered something to which its appetite is naturally inclined, it is moved to that alone, without making any choice. Just as fire is moved upward and not downward, without its making any choice. “As stated in Phys. iii, 3 ‘movement is the act of the movable, caused by a mover.’ Wherefore the power of the mover appears in the movement of that which it moves. Accordingly, in all things moved by reason, the order of reason which moves them is evident, although the things themselves are without reason: for an arrow through the motion of the archer goes straight towards the target, as though it were endowed with reason to direct its course. The same may be seen in the movements of clocks and all engines put together by the art of man. Now as artificial things are in comparison to human art, so are all natural things in comparison to the Divine art. And accordingly order is to be seen in things moved by nature, just as in things moved by reason, as is stated in Phys. ii. And thus it is that in the works of irrational animals we notice certain marks of sagacity, in so far as they have a natural inclination to set about their actions in a most orderly manner through being ordained by the Supreme art. For which reason, too, certain animals are called prudent or sagacious; and not because they reason or exercise any choice about things. This is clear from the fact that all that share in one nature, invariably act in the same way” (Summa Theologiae, I–II, 13, 2).

16. “Nullus peccat ex hoc quod utitur re aliqua ad hoc ad quod est. In rerum autem ordine imperfectiora sunt propter perfectiora, sicut etiam in generationis via natura ab imperfectis ad perfecta procedit. Et inde est quod sicut in generatione hominis prius est vivum, deinde animal, ultimo autem homo; ita etiam ea quae tantum vivunt, ut plantae, sunt communiter propter omnia animalia, et animalia sunt propter hominem. Et ideo si homo utatur plantis ad utilitatem animalium, et animalibus ad utilitatem hominis, non est illicitum, ut etiam per philosophum patet, in I Polit. Inter alios autem usus maxime necessarius esse videtur ut animalia plantis utantur in cibum, et homines animalibus, quod sine mortificatione eorum fieri non potest. Et ideo licitum est et plantas mortificare in usum animalium, et animalia in usum hominum, ex ipsa ordinatione divina, dicitur enim Gen. I, ecce, dedi vobis omnem herbam et universa ligna, ut sint vobis in escam et cunctis animantibus. Et Gen. IX dicitur, omne quod movetur et vivit, erit vobis in cibum” (Summa Theologiae II–II, 64, 1).

17. Though it may not be the first, the most famous gesture of renewed respect for animals is the celebrated passage in Montaigne (“Apology for Raymond Sebond,” Essays II, 12), in which, in addition to defending the existence of a linguistic faculty in animals (since he does not see how their ability to complain, rejoice, call upon each other for help and utter amorous invitations can be defined otherwise), he observes how the constructive behavior of birds and spiders evinces a capacity for choice and thought: “Take the swallows, when spring returns; we can see them ferreting through all the corners of our houses; from a thousand places they select one, finding it the most suitable place to make their nests: is that done without judgment or discernment? And then when they are making their nests (so beautifully and so wondrously woven together) can birds use a square rather than a circle, an obtuse angle rather than a right angle, without knowing their properties or their effects? Do they bring water and then clay without realizing that hardness can be softened by dampening? They cover the floors of their palaces with moss or down; do they do so without foreseeing that the tender limbs of their little ones will lie more softly there and be more comfortable? Do they protect themselves from the stormy winds and plant their dwellings to the eastward, without recognizing the varying qualities of those winds and considering that one is more healthy for them than another? Why does the spider make her web denser in one place and slacker in another, using this knot here and that knot there, if she cannot reflect, think or reach conclusions?” (The Complete Essays. Translated and edited with an introduction and notes by M. A. Screech, Penguin Books, 1991, pp. 508–509).

18. Dante Alighieri, Il Convivio (= The Banquet), translated by Richard Lansing, New York: Garland, 1990.

19. “Canis autem diversas significationes habet, nam ut diabolum uel Iudeum siue gentilem populum significant. Vnde propheta dominum precatur dicens in Psalmo: Erue a framea anima meam, et de manu canis unicam meam. Nam in meliore parte canis ponitur, ut in Ecclesiaste ubi scriptum est: Melior est canis uius leone mortuo. Hic leonem diabolum, canem uero gentilem vel hominem peccatorem accipiendum puto, qui deo melior dicitur: Quod ad fidem et pententiam posit venire, hinc de Iudeis scrptum est: Conuertantur ad uesperum et famem patientur, ut canes circuibunt ciuitatem. Canes intelleguntur muti sacerdotes uel inprobi ut in ecclesia: Canes muti non ualentes lactare. Canes Iudei in Psalmo: Quoniam circumdederunt me canes multi. Canes populus gentium ut in euangelio: Non est bonum sumere panem filiorum et mittere canibus ad manducandum. Canes heretici ut in Deuteronomio: Non inferes precium canis in domum dei tui. Et in apostolo: Videte canes uidete malos operarios uidete concisiones. Canis uero uoracissimum animal, atque inportunum, consueuit illas domus latratibus defendere, in quibus edacitatem suam nouit, accepto pane saciate, his merito conparantur Iudei qui Christianae fidali munere salo contigit, ut qui ante fuit persecutor Christiani nominis, postea diuino munere iungeretur apostolis. Canes homini rixosi uel detractors alter utro se lacerantes, ut in apostolo: Quod si inuicem mordetis et comedetis uidete ne ab inuicem consumamini. Catuli abusiue dicuntur, quarumlibet bestiarum filii, nam propriae catuli canum sunt, per diminutionem dicti. Lynciscile dicuntur ut ait Plinius canes nati ex lupis et canibus. Cum inter se forte miscuntur, solent et Inde feminas canes noctu in si alligatas admitti, ad tigres bestias a quibus in siliri et nasci, ex eodem faetu canes adeo acerrimos et fortes, ut in complexu leones prosternant. Catuli ergo significant gentiles, unde est in evangelio, quod Sirofaenissa mulier, cui dominus ait: Non est bonum sumere panem filiorum et mittere canibus, respodit ei dicens: Etiam domine. Nam et Catelli edunt de micis quae cadunt de mensa dominorum suorum. Mensa quippe est scriptura sancta quae nobis panem uitae ministrat. Mice puerorum interna sunt misteria scripturarum, quibus humilium solent corda refici. Non ergo crustas, sed micas de pane puerorum edunt. Catelli quia conversi ad fidem, qui erant despecti in gentibus non littere superficiem in scripturis sed spiritalium sensuum, quia in bonis attibus proficere ualeant inquirunt” (Rabanus Maurus, De naturis rerum VIII).

20. To complicate things further, another element comes into play. Medieval thought is to put it mildly obsessed with two objects of investigation, God and man. Observe what happens in the theory of definition from Porphyry’s Isagoge down to Ockham. Porphyry’s tree ought to be seen as a logical artifice that permits us to define every element of our cosmic furniture, but in fact it is invariably exemplified in abbreviated form, in such a way as to distinguish unequivocally man from the divinity. As we observed in Chapter 1, none of the available examples of the Arbor Porphiriana serves to define unambiguously the horse or the dog, to say nothing of plants and minerals. Irrational animals find a place there only to furnish a pole of comparison with the rational animals. Whereupon the medieval theory of definition leaves them to their fate and fails to provide pointers for distinguishing a dog from a horse, let alone a dog from a wolf. In order to have adequate taxonomical instruments at our disposal, we must await the naturalists and theorists of artificial languages of seventeenth-century England (see Slaughter 1982 and Eco 1993).

21. I refer the reader to the chapter on “Signs” in Eco (1984b: 14–45), which was based on my entry “Segno” in volume 12 (1981) of the Enciclopedia Einaudi. See also Todorov (1982).

22. “For a sign is a thing which, over and above the impression it makes on the senses, causes something else to come into the mind as a consequence of itself: as when we see a footprint, we conclude that an animal whose footprint this is has passed by; and when we see smoke, we know that there is fire beneath; and when we hear the voice of a living man, we think of the feeling in his mind; and when the trumpet sounds, soldiers know that they are to advance or retreat, or do whatever else the state of the battle requires. Now some signs are natural, others conventional. Natural signs are those which, apart from any intention or desire of using them as signs, do yet lead to the knowledge of something else, as, for example, smoke when it indicates fire. For it is not from any intention of making it a sign that it is so, but through attention to experience we come to know that fire is beneath, even when nothing but smoke can be seen. And the footprint of an animal passing by belongs to this class of signs. And the countenance of an angry or sorrowful man indicates the feeling in his mind, independently of his will: and in the same way every other emotion of the mind is betrayed by the tell-tale countenance, even though we do nothing with the intention of making it known. This class of signs, however, it is no part of my design to discuss at present. But as it comes under this division of the subject, I could not altogether pass it over. It will be enough to have noticed it thus far. Conventional signs, on the other hand, are those which living beings mutually exchange for the purpose of showing, as well as they can, the feelings of their minds, or their perceptions, or their thoughts. Nor is there any reason for giving a sign except the desire of drawing forth and conveying into another’s mind what the giver of the sign has in his own mind. We wish, then, to consider and discuss this class of signs so far as men are concerned with it, because even the signs which have been given us of God, and which are contained in the Holy Scriptures, were made known to us through men—those, namely, who wrote the Scriptures. The beasts, too, have certain signs among themselves by which they make known the desires in their mind. For when the poultry-cock has discovered food, he signals with his voice for the hen to run to him, and the dove by cooing calls his mate, or is called by her in turn; and many signs of the same kind are matters of common observation. Now whether these signs, like the expression or the cry of a man in grief, follow the movement of the mind instinctively and apart from any purpose, or whether they are really used with the purpose of signification, is another question, and does not pertain to the matter in hand. And this part of the subject I exclude from the scope of this work as not necessary to my present object” (Augustine, On Christian Doctrine, II, 1–3, online trans. by J. F. Shaw, from Select Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, at http://www.ccel.org/ccel/augustine/doctrine.iv.iii.ii.html). On the doctrine of the sign in Augustine, see Manetti (1987), Vecchio (1994), and Sirridge (1997).

23. “Liquet autem ex suprapositis significativarum vocum alias naturaliter, alias ad placitum significare. Quecumque enim habiles sunt ad significandum vel ex natura vel ex impositione significative dicuntur. Naturales quidem voces, quas non humana inventio imposuit sed sola natura [contulit], naturaliter [et non] ex impositione significativas dicimus, ut ea quam latrando canis emittit, ex qua ipsius iram concepimus. Omnium enim hominum discretio ex latratu canis eius iram intelligit, quem ex commotione ire certum est procedere in his omnibus que latrant. Sed huiusmodi voces que nec locutiones componunt, quippe nec ab hominibus proferuntur, ab omni logica sunt aliene” (Petrus Abaelardus, Dialectica, First complete edition of the Parisian manuscript, With an introduction by L. M. De Rijk, Ph.D., Second, revised edition, Assen: Van Gorcum 1970, p. 114).

24. “Significare Aristotelis accipit per se intellectum constituere, significativum autem dicitur, quidquid habile est per se ad significandum ex institutione aliqua sive ab homine facta sive a natura. Nam latratus natura artifex, id est Deus, ea intentione cani contulit, ut iram eius repraesentaret; et voluntas hominum nomina et verba ad significandum instituit nec non etiam res quasdam, ut circulum vini vel signa quibus monachi utuntur. Non enim significare vocum tantum est, verum etiam rerum. Unde scriptum est: nutu signisque loquentur (Ovid, II Trist. 453). Per ‘significativum’ separat a nomine voces non significativas, quae scilicet neque ab homine neque a natura institutae sunt ad significandum. Nam licet unaquaeque vox certificare possit suum prolatorem animal esse, sicut latratus canis ipse esse iratum, non tamen omnes ad hoc institutae sunt ostendendum, sicut latratus est ad significationem irae institutus. Similiter unaquaeque vox, cum se per auditum praesentans se subgerat intellectui, non ideo significativa dicenda est, quia per nullam institutionem hoc habet, sicut nec aliquis homo se praesentans nobis dum per hoc quod sensui subjacet, de se dat intellectum, sui significativus dicitur, quia licet ita sit a natura creatus, ut hoc facere possit, non est ideo creatus, ut hoc faciat. ‘Significativum vero magis ad causam quam ad actum significandi pertinet, ut sicut non omnia significativa actualiter significant, ita non omnia actu significantia sint significativa, sed ea sola quae ad significandum sunt instituta” (Logica “Ingredientibus,” Glosses on the Peri Hermeneias. In Bernhard Geyer, Peter Abaelards Philosophische Schriften, Münster, Aschendorff, 1927, pp. 335–336).

25. An explanation of why in the case of animals nature acts as a sort of agent will (comparable to “agent intellect”) is provided by Albertus Magnus, De anima II [De voce qualiter fiat], iii, 22: “Et cum duo sint in anima, affectus scilicet doloris vel gaudii et conceptus cordis de rebus, non est vox significans affectum, sed potius conceptum. Cetera autem animalia affectus habentia sonos suos affectus indicantes emittunt et ideo non vocant; et quaecumque illorum plurium sunt affectuum sunt etiam plurium sonorum, et quae levioris sunt complexionis, et ideo aves plurium sunt garrituum quam gressibilia. Et illae quae inter aves sunt latioris linguae, et melioris memoriae, magis imitantur locutionem et ceteros sonos, quos audiunt. Licet enim bruta habeant imaginationem, sicut superius ostendimus, tamen non moveretur ab ipsis imaginatis secundum rationem imaginatorum, sed a natura et ideo omnia similiter operantur; una enim hirundo facit nidum sicut alia, et haec imitatio est naturae potius quam artis.Ideo anima imaginativa in eis non regit naturam, neque agit eam ad opera, secundum diversa imaginata, sicut facit homo, sed potius regitur a natura et agitur ad opera ab ipsa, ei ideo fit quod licet habeant apus se imaginata, tamen ad exprimendum illa non formant voces. Affectus autem laetitiarum et tristiarum magis profundatur in natura quam in anima, et ideo illos exprimunt sonis et garritibus.”

26. According to this reading the affections of the soul are not mental images of things, but modes of being of thought, cognitive modalities (like thinking, being afraid, or experiencing joy). The pragmata are not real things or facts in general (otherwise how could we explain why Aristotle says elsewhere in his works that we can think of nonexistent or false hybrids like the hircocervus or phenomena whose existence we are unable to prove (such as squaring the circle or the commensurability of the diagonal). Likewise, “those things that are in the voice” could be transformations, differentiations, or articulations that are proper to the human voice. Finally, an expression like kata syntheken does not mean that linguistic voces are related to the affections of the soul by means of convention, but that they are articulate, the effect of a syntactic composition (and for this very reason the voces emitted by animals, which are inarticulate, cannot express thoughts). At the same time the interpretation of the omoiomata is also called into question. It would refer to the fact that there exists a relationship of structural similarity between logical-cognitive operations and events in the world. In conclusion, the passage from Aristotle should be reinterpreted as follows: “The articulations of the human voice and the logical-cognitive operations of the human soul are different from each other and complementary, just as written articulations and articulations of the voice are. And just as the minimal units with which and in which writing is articulated are not the same for all mankind, neither are the minimal units in which the linguistic voice is articulated. On the other hand, the logical-cognitive operations of which the vocal and graphic units are the natural physiognomic signs are the same for all mankind, and likewise the same for all mankind are the facts with which the logical-cognitive operations of the human soul are in a relation of similarity” (Lo Piparo 2003: 187).

27. De Interpretatione, in Aristoteles Latinus II, 1–2, ed. L. Minio-Paluello, Bruges-Paris, Desclée de Brouwer, 1965, pp. 5, 4–11 and pp. 6, 4, 11–13. The following is a translation of Aristotle’s original Greek text: “Now spoken sounds are symbols of affections in the soul, and written marks symbols of spoken sounds. And just as written marks are not the same for all men, neither are spoken sounds. But what these are in the first place signs of—affections of the soul—are the same for all; and what these affections are likenesses of—actual things—are also the same … A name is a spoken sound significant by convention, without time, none of whose parts is significant in separation … I say ‘by convention’ because no name is a name naturally but only when it has become a symbol. Even inarticulate noises (of beasts, for instance) do indeed reveal something, yet none of them is a name.” Aristotle’s Categories and De Interpretatione, Translated with Notes and Glossary by J. L. Ackrill, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963, pp. 43–44.

28. Boethius translates semeion as nota on his own initiative, whereas he finds the identification of symbolon with nota already sanctioned by Cicero (Topica VIII, 35), on whom he comments as follows: “Nota vero est quae rem quamque designat. Quo fit ut omne nomen nota sit, idcirco quod notam facit rem de qua praedicatur, id Aristoteles symbolon nominavit” (In Topicis Ciceronis Commentaria IV, PL. 64, col. 1111 B). And here Boethius establishes the equivalency, as characteristic properties of nota, between rem designare and rem notam facere, in other words, between the significative function proper to Aristotle’s symbolon and the inferential or symptomatic function of semeion.

29. See Latratus canis (“On Animal Language”), p. 29, n. 20, and De Resp. 476 a 1–b 12; Hist. An. 535 b 14–24; De an. 420 b 9–14. And along the same lines Boethius, In Librum Aristotelis De Interpretatione Commentaria majora, PL 64, col. 423 D, where he explains that fish and cicadas do not have a voice but produce sounds with their gills or with their chests. Similar observations are found in Thomas (In l. De Int., 1, IV, 46) as well as in Pseudo Aegidius Romanus (In Libros Peri hermeneias Expositio, Venetiis 1507, fol. 49rb). The example of the latratus canis is already present in Ammonius, whose work, however, was only translated into Latin in 1268 by William of Moerbeke (Commentaire sur le Peri Hermenneias, ed. G. Verbeke, Corpus Latinum Commentariorum in Aristotelem Graecorum I. Louvain-Paris: Nauwelaerts 1961, p. 47: “Hoc autem ‘secundum confictionem’ separat ipsum a natura significantibus vocibus. Tales autem sunt quae irrationalium animalium voces. Extraneo enim aliquo superveniente, canis latrans significat extranei praesentiam. Sed non secundum aliquam confictionem et condictionem ad invicem emittunt talem vocem canes” (“ ‘By convention’ distinguishes [the name] from the vocal sounds significant by nature. Such are the vocal sounds of the irrational animals. For, when a stranger suddenly appears, a dog by his bark signifies the presence of the stranger; but dogs do not produce this sort of vocal sound according to any convention or agreements among themselves”). Ammonius, On Aristotle’s On Interpretation 1–8, Translated by David Blank, Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1996, p. 39.

30. “Neque solum nomen vox significativa est, sed sunt quaedam voces quae significant quidem, sed nomina non sunt, ut ea quae a nobis in aliquibus affectibus proferuntur, ut cum quis gemitum edit, vel cum dolore concitus emittit clamorem. Illud enim doloris animi, illud corporis signum est, et cum sint voces et significent quamdam vel animi vbel corporis passionem, nullus tamen gemitum clamoremque dixerit nomen. Mutorumque quoque animalium sunt quaedam voces quae significant: ut canum latratus iras significant canum, alia vox autem mollior quodam blandimenta XXXX decsignat, quare adjecta differentia separandum erat nomen ab his omnibus quae voces quidem essent et significarent sed nominis vocabulum non tenerentur” (In De Int. Comm. Maj., PL 64, col. 420 C–D).

31. See In l. De Int. Comm. Maj., PL 64, col. 423 A–B: “Nec vero dicitur quod nulla vox naturaliter aliquod designet, sed quod nomina non naturaliter, sed positione significent. Alioqui habent hoc ferarum, mutorumque animalium soni, quorum vox quidem significat aliquid, ut hinnitus equi consueti equi inquisitionem, latratus canum latrantium iracundiam monstrat, et alia huiusmodi. Sed cum voces mutorum animalium propria natura significant, nullis tamen elementorum formulis conscribunt. Nomen vero quamquam subjacet elementis.”

32. Cf. Saint Thomas Aquinas and Tommaso de Vio Cajetan, Aristotle On Interpretation: Commentary by St. Thomas and Cajetan (Peri hermeneias), trans. from the Latin with an introd. by Jean T. Oesterle, Milwaukee, Wis.: Marquette University Press, 1962.

33. See pp. 27–28, n. 15, in Latratus canis (“On Animal Language”), the references to Garlandus Compotista, Dialectica III (ed. De Rijk. Assen: Van Gorcum, 1959, pp. 64, 24–28); in L. M. De Rijk, Logica Modernorum (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1967, II, pt 2, p. 78, 7–16), the Abbreviatio Montana, p. 149, 15–24; the Ars Emmerana, p. 179, 12–19, the Ars Burana, p. 358, 1–7, the Introductiones Parisienses, p. 380, 11–18, the Logica ‘Ut dicit’, p. 418, 5–9, the Logica ‘Cum sit nostra’, p. 463, 7–17, the Dialectica Monanensis. For the thirteenth century, Peter of Spain, Tractatus, called afterwards ‘Summulae Logicales’ (ed. De Rijk. Assen: Van Gorcum, 1972, pp. 1, 23, 2, 9) and Lambert of Auxerre, Logica (ed F. Alessio. Florence, La Nuova Italia, 1971, p. 7).

34. All prior manuals of logic began their treatment with a definition of sonus as a genus of vox. In his commentary on De interpretatione (IV, 38), Thomas will likewise affirm that “vox est sonus ab ore animali prolatus, cum imaginatione quadam.”

35. But see Lo Piparo (2003, IV, 9).

36. Institutiones Grammaticae, I, cap, de ‘voce” (ed. M. Herz, in Grammatici Latini II, Leipsig, 1855, reprint Hildesheim 1961, pp. 5–6).

37. See Latratus canis (“On Animal Language”), p. 29, n. 20. The influence of Priscian’s classification is discernible from the beginning of the eleventhth century onward, when, thanks especially to the influence of the Irish grammarians operating on the continent, in particular in the context of the Carolingian cultural renaissance, his authority begins to supplant that of Donatus in the principal Episcopal schools (see Holz 1981). Analogous positions are to be found in Alcuin’s Grammatica, in the Excerptio de arte grammatica Prisciani of Rabanus Maurus, in Sedulius Scottus’s In Donati artem maiorem, etc. Later the same classification will be borrowed, for example, by Petrus Helias in his Summa super Priscianum maiorem, by Vincent of Beauvais in his Speculum Doctrinale, and eventually by Simon of Dacia in his Domus Gramatice.

38. “Dupliciter enim ea quae simpliciter voce divisa, videlicet in significativam et non significativam, litteratam et illitteratam, quarum hanc quidem articulatam, hanc autem inarticulatum vocant” (“Let vocal sound simpliciter be divided twice into two, i.e., into significant and meaningless, and into lettered and unlettered, the former of which is called ‘articulate’ and the latter ‘inarticulate’ ”). Ammonius, then, appears to put articulation only among the differences characterizing the voces illitteratae. “Accidet enim hanc quidam esse vocem significativam et litteratam ut homo, hanc autem significativam et illitteratam ut canis latratus, hanc autem non significativam et litteratam ut blituri, hanc autem non significativam et illitteratam ut sibilus quae fit frustra et non gratia significandi aliquid aut vocis alicuius irrationalium animalium repraesentatio, quae fit non gratia repraesentationis (haec enim iam significativa), sed quae fit inordinate et sine intentione finis” (“For there will be vocal sound which is significant and lettered, like ‘human being,’ vocal sound which is significant and unlettered, like the bark of a dog, vocal sound which is meaningless and lettered, like ‘blituri,’ and vocal sound which is meaningless and unlettered, like whistling which is done for no reason and not to signify anything or the imitation [by a man] of some vocal sound made by irrational animals when it happens not in order to mimic (for that would already be significant), but in a random and purposeless manner”). Ammonius, On Aristotle’s On Interpretation 1–8, Translated by David Blank, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996, p. 40. (Commentaire sur le Peri Herm., op. cit., pp. 59, 3–60). Thomas was doubtless familiar with Ammonius in William of Moerbeke’s translation. In his commentary on the De Interpretatione (IV, 39) he echoes one of its typical lines of argument: “Sed cum vox sit quedam res naturalis, nomen autem non est aliquid naturale sed ab hominibus institutum, videtur quod non debuit genus nominis ponere vocem, quae est ex natura, sed magis signum, quod est ex institutione, ut diceretur: nomen est signum vocale; sicut enim convenientius definiretur scutella, si quis diceret quod est vas ligneum, quam si quis diceret qupod est lignum formatum in vas.” In his commentary the example Ammonius gave was that of the throne (pp. 76). What is more worthy of note is that, shortly afterward (IV, 40), Thomas appears not to accept Ammonius’s proposal to define nomen by taking signum as its genus. This is why in Figure 4 we preferred to insert sonus as our genus. See in this connection Latratus canis (“On Animal Language”).

39. See Max Pohlenz, Die Stoa. Die Geschichte einer geistigen Bewegung, Göttingen, Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1948–1955 and Pinborg (1962: 155–156).

40. See Latratus canis (“On Animal Language”), p. 31, n. 25. This identification is particularly explicit in John of Dacia’s Summa grammatica, and it appears in the second half of the fourteenth century in a manual of logic like the Summulae Logicales of Richard of Lavenham (see Spade 1980: 380–381), where the pseudo-language of parrots is discussed, citing Isadore and an epigram of Martial’s.

41. The position of the grammarians on the relationship between meaning and articulation would appear less original if we were to accept the reading of De Interpretatione proposed by Lo Piparo (2003) mentioned in Note 27 above. If kata syntheken is not to be interpreted as ad placitum but “by virtue of articulation, by syntactic composition of sounds otherwise deprived of meaning,” we might be entitled to suspect that the grammatical tradition had somehow been influenced by an original reading of Aristotle. And in that case the grammarians would not have considered it implicit that one articulates in order to express something, but rather that a linguistic articulation was necessary if one was to express oneself conceptually. If this was the case it would be more comprehensible why for them articulation was so closely tied to the meaning to be expressed.

42. For a more detailed discussion see Latratus canis (“On Animal Language”), p. 13, n. 16, and p. 17, nn. 29 and 36, where the somewhat anomalous solution of a contemporary of Thomas, the Pseudo-Kilwardby, is also considered. Influenced by Priscian, he is inclined to exclude animal voices from the field of conventional signification, and yet, unlike the other grammarians and Modistae who will come later, he attempts a classification of all signa. In his system, then, animal sounds are indeed excluded from the voces significativae, only to reappear, albeit with some ambiguity, among the signa naturalia. “Ad hoc dicendum quod diversae sunt scientiae de signis. Signorum enim quaedam significant aliquid ex institutione et quaedam significant naturaliter ut effectus generaliter sive sit convertibilis sive non convertibilis cum sua causa est signum suae causae. Quod patet tam in genere naturae quam in genere moris. In genere naturae fumus est signum ignis non convertibile et defectus luminis sive eclipsis a corpore luminoso est signum interpositionis tenebrosis corporis. Similiter in genere moris delectatio, quae est in operationibus, est signum habitus voluntarii, sicut dicit Philosophus in secundo Ethicorum ubi dicit quod opportet signa facere habituum delectationem vel tristitiam in operationibus. Et sic patet quod effectus generaliter est signum suae causae. Unde Philosophus primo Posteriorum demonstrationes factas per effectum vocat syllogismos per signa in illa parte: ‘Quoniam autem ex necessitate sunt circa unumquodque.’ Secundum quorundam expositionem signorum vero quae significant ex institutione quaedam sunt instituta ad significandum tantum, quaedam sunt instituta ad significandum et sanctificandum. Signa ultimo modo sunt signa legis divinae de quibus nihil ad praesans. Quae autem sunt instituta ad significandum tantum quaedam sunt voces, de quibus dicit Philosophus quod sunt notae passionum.… Et de talibus signis est scientia rationalis quia rationis est componere partes vocis et ordinare et ad significandum instituere, non naturae vel moris, ut postea patebit. Quaedam autem sunt res ut signa metaphysica (?) sicut sunt gestus et nutus corporei, circuli et imaginationes de quibus nihil ad praesens.” (See “Roberti Kilwardby quod fertur Commenti super Priscianum maiorem Extracta,” ed. K. M. Fredborg et al., Cahiers de l’Inst. du Moyen-Age grec et latin 15, 1975, pp. 3–4). [Translator’s note: In n. 29 to the collaborative essay alluded to at beginning of these notes, “On Animal Language in the Medieval Classification of Signs,” Eco suggests, after citing the same Latin passage by Kilwardby, that, instead of “imaginationes” in the last sentence, the text ought to read “imagines.”]

43. See Latratus canis (“On Animal Language”), n. 30. This theme is developed in the De anima of Avicenna, where the opposition between human language and the voces of the animals is placed in relation with the diversity of ends toward which communication is ordered: among humans these are infinite since they are determined by our social existence, while among animals they are few and dictated by natural instinct (Liber de Anima seu Sextus de Naturalibus V, ed. S. van Riet, Louvain, Leiden, 1968, p. 72, 42–48).

44. “Interiectiones omnes sunt mediae inter istas voces nunc dictas scilicet: significativae naturaliter et inter voces plene significantes ad placitum … Interiectiones enim imperfecte significant ad placitum et parum significant per modum conceptus propter quod vicinantur vocibus illis quae solum per modum affectus subiect isignificant cuiusmodi sunt gemitus et cetera quae facts sunt. Gemitus enim et suspiria et huiusmodi naturaliter et per modum solius affectus excitantis animam intellectivam significant, quae per interiectiones gemendi et dolendi et suspirandi et admirandi et huiusmodi significantur per modum conceptus, licet imperfecti” (De signis, I, 9 in Karin M. Fredborg, Lauge Nielsen and Jan Pinborg, eds., “An Unedited Part of Roger Bacon’s Opus Maius: “De Signis,” Traditio 34 [1978], p. 75–136). In general on the problems raised by the classification of interjections in the medieval grammatical tradition, see Pinborg (1961). And see also Latratus canis (“On Animal Language”).

45. “Si vero obiciatur in contrarium quod Aristoteles in librum Perihermeneias dicit voces significare passiones in anima, ut Boethius exponat de speciebus et in libro illo loquitur de partibus enuntiationis vel enuntiatione, quae significant ad placitum et tunc partes orationis sive voces impositae rebus significabunt ut videtur species ad placitum, dicendum est quod Aristotele a principio capituli de nomine intendit loqui de vocibus, ut sunt signa ad placitum, sed ante illud capitulum loquitur in universali de signis sive ad placitum sive naturaliter, quamvis ascendat in particulari ad illa signa, quae intendit, scilicet ad nomen et verbum prout significant res ad placitum. Et quod loquitur in universali de signis, manifestum est per hoc, quod dicit quod intellectus sunt signa rerum et voces signa intellectuum ety scriptura est signum vocis, certe intellectus non est signum rei ad placitum, sed naturale, ut dicit Boethius in Commento, quoniam eundem intellectum habet Graecus de re, quam habet Latinus, et tamen diversas voces proferunt ad rem intellectam designandam. Voces autem et scriptura possunt ad placitum significare aliqua, et alia ut signa naturalia. Unde vox imposita rei extra animam, si comparetur ad ipsam rem, est vox significativa ad placitum, quia ei imposita est. Si vero ad speciem propriam ipsius vocis, tunc est signum naturale in triplici modo signi naturalis, ut habitum est prius. Si vero ad speciem rei nec antequam cognoscetur res per eam, quia opportet quod actu intelligatur res per speciem et habitum nominata et vocata et repraesentata per vocem, antequam vox sit signum speciei ipsius rei” (De signis V, 166, op. cit., p. 134.).

46. Augustine was far more subtle in his De doctrina Christiana II, xxv, 38–39, where he recognized the largely conventional nature of images and mimic representations.

47. “Vocem alia significativa, alia non, significativa. Non significativa est per quam nichil auditui representatur, ut ‘bubo’ etc.; vox significativa est per quam omne animal interpretatur aliquid omni vel alicui sue speciei—omne vero animal potest hoc facere, quia natura non dedit ei vocem ociosam. Et hoc possumus videre manifeste, quai gallina aliter garrit cum pullis suis quando invitat eos ad escam et quando docet eos cavere a milvo. Bruta autem animalia interpretantur omni individuo sue speciei, ut asinus omni asino, leo omni leoni, sed homo non interpretatur omni homini, set SED alicui, quia Gallicus Gallico, Graecus Graeco, Latinus Latino et hec solum. Nullum eciam animal interpretatur alicui individuo alterius speciei nisi inproprie adminus per suam vocem propriam nichil interpretatur nisi eis qui sunt de sua specie, tamen si ex industria et assuetudine posit aliquod animal uti voce alteriius, ut pica voce hominis, potest aliquo modo inproprie et non naturaliter significare alii quam sue speciei ut homini; et forte quamvis homo posit aliquid comprehendere per vocem pice, non tamen est illa vox proprie significativa, cum non fit a pica sub intentione significandi, et quamvis homo possit aliquid apprehendere per talem vocem , pica tamen pice nihil significat per illam. Similiter cantus galli nichil proprie nobis significat tamen vox significativa, set SED gallum cantare significat nobis horas, sicut rubor in mane significant nobis pluviam. Vocum significativarum alia significativa ad placitum, alia naturaliter. Vox significativa naturaliter est que ordinatur ad significandum, ut gemitus infirmorum et omnis vox ferarum vel sonus. Vox significativa ad placitum est que ex institucione humana aliquid significant” (Opera hactenus inedita Rogeri Baconi, fasc. XV, ed. R. Steele. Oxonii, Clarendon Press, 1940, p. 233, 20 234, 13).

48. “Est tamen sciendum quod ad cuiuslibet vocis prolationem prencipalitur duo instrumenta naturalia sunt necessaria, scilicet pulmo et vocalis arteria. Ex isto patet quod latratus canum etiam est sonus vox et quando arguitur ‘tamen non fit cum intentione aliquid significandi’ respondetur negando assumptum. Neque oportet quod omnes intelligent illum latratum, sed sufficit quod illi intelligant qui sciunt proprietatem et habitudinem canum. Nam latratus canum uni significat gaudium, alteri autem iram.” (Commentum emendatum et correctum in primum et quartum tractatus Petri Hyspani Et super tractatibus Marsilij de Suppositionibus, ampliationibus, appellationibus et consequentiis (Hangenau, 1495, s. p.; reprint Frankfurt, Minerva, 1967 with title Commentum in primum et quartum tractatum Petri Hispani.) See Latratus canis (“On Animal Language”).

49. We might add to the list a number of marginal phenomena (mentioned in Latratus canis, “On Animal Language”). Take, for example, Thomas’s observations on the miraculous or magical instances of talking animals reported by Scripture (Quaestiones disputatae de potentia Dei, VI, 5): “Ad tertium dicendum, quod locutio canum, et alia huiusmodi quae Simon Magus faciebat, potuerunt fieri per illusionem, et non per effectus veritatem. Si tamen per effectus veritatem hoc fierent, nullum sequitur inconveniens, quia non dabat ani daemon virtutem loquendi, sicut datur mutis per miraculum, sed ipsemet per aliquem motum localem sonum formabat, litteratae et articulatae vocis similitudinem et modum habentem; per hunc autem modum etiam asina Balaam intelligitur fuisse locuta (Numbers XXII, 28), Angelo tamen bono operante, (“Reply to the Third Objection. Speaking dogs and like works of Simon the magician were quite possibly done by trickery and not in very truth. If, however, they were genuine, it matters not: since the demon did not give a dog the power of speech miraculously as when it is given to the dumb; but by some kind of local movement he made sounds to be heard like words composed of letters and syllables. It is thus that we may understand Balaam’s ass to have spoken [Numbers, XXII, 28], although in this case it was by the action of a good angel”). On the power of God (Quæstiones disputatæ de potentia Dei) by Saint Thomas Aquinas. Literally translated by the English Dominican fathers. Three books in one. Westminster, Md.: Newman Press, 1952, p. 186. Dante too deals with talking animals in the Convivio (III, vii, 8–10), where he cites the magpie and the parrot, and in the De vulgari eloquentia (I, ii, 6–8), where he cites the examples de serpente loquente ad priumum mulierem, de asina Balaam, de piscis loquentibus.

50. It is a slow process. If, as late as 1603, Fabrici d’Acquapendente can compose a treatise De brutorum loqui in which he takes up once again the classical arguments concerning communication among animals and their passions, in 1650, Athanasius Kircher, in his Musurgia Universalis (I, 14–15), is interested in the sounds uttered by the various animals and makes an accurate study of the syntax, if not the semantics, of the monkeys of the Americas, of cicadas, grasshoppers, frogs, and various types of birds, with accurate pentagrammatical transcriptions that take into account different structures, including the pigolismus, the glazismus, and the teretismus, distinguishing the sounds made by the mother hen when laying and those with which she calls her chicks—and revealing himself to have been an expert pioneer bird watcher. His was no longer a philosophical reflection on the possibility of animal language, such as occurred in the Middle Ages: Kircher devoted a vast portion of his treatise to the examination of the various phonatory organs of the animals in order to explain the possibility or impossibility of their “languages.”

51. The phrase quasi liber et pictura is a line from the Latin poem quoted in Chapter 3 (section 3.3). At this point we may even find ourselves annoyed by the barking of a dog which has abandoned the pages of the theologians and invaded the nights of lovers and robbers. Two centuries after Bacon (1544), Michelangelo Biondo will reveal a trick to stop a dog barking, which he apparently learned from the thieves themselves, interrupted in the course of their night’s work, as well as from lovers, disturbed as they attempted to scale their mistress’s balcony. All you have to do is to swallow or drink a dog’s heart, duly baked and reduced to a powder: “Accepimus a quibusdam, quod cum quis latratum canis vult cohibere ne illi sit impedimento in quibusdam peragendis (quod maxime amantibus ad amantes accedentibus nocere solet et furibus nocturnis) itaque cor canis edat, quamvis dicunt quidam quod potatum praestantius est; ideo ustum redigatur in pulverem et deglutiatur, quoniam latratum canis comprimet; quod furibus et amantibus dimittimus credendum.” Which is a bit like catching a bird by sprinkling salt on its tail. See De canibus et venatione libellus, “Ad latratum,” Rome 1544. Partial ed. in Arte della caccia, ed. G. Innamorati, vol. 1, Milano, Panfilo, 1965.