The evolutionary theorist had some profound, if less heralded, insights into language, Maria Popova writes at Brain Pickings: "What set us apart from animals, he argued, was a matter of degree, not kind — a greater ability to produce sounds and ideas, an expression of our higher mental powers. Where humans differ from other animals, Darwin believed, is simply in our greater capacity to put together sounds with ideas, which is a function of our higher mental powers."
