Hayagrīva: This is Thomas Henry Huxley. Huxley felt that the main difference between man and the animals is the ability to speak. Now, is...
Prabhupāda: That is the beginning of another nonsense. Everyone speaks in his own language. What does he..., what he means by speak?
Hayagrīva: But isn't speech, which is the articulation of the intellect, the primary difference between man and the animals in the sense that is it not through words that one can come to understand God?
Prabhupāda: That is another thing, but the animal has a, his own language, as the human being has his own language. So why does he say that? When he speaks, he speaks from the very beginning in his own language.
Hayagrīva: Well he, he, he mentions speech as being "Intelligible, rational speech..."
Prabhupāda: They have got rational speech.
Hayagrīva: "...that accumulates and organizes experience which is almost lost with the cessation of indi..., with every individual life in other animals." In other words, man has a history due to language, but animals may be able to articulate certain basic facts to one another, but they have no culture or history.
Prabhupāda: Then those who speak in Sanskrit language, they are only human beings; all other animals. If he says like that, Sanskrit language is the oldest...
Hayagrīva: It is the oldest.
Prabhupāda: ...mother of all language, and one who speaks in Sanskrit, he is only perfect, all other animals, according to his theory. But Mr. Huxley does not speak in Sanskrit.
Hayagrīva: Well, we'll see. He read quite a bit. I don't know if he read in Sanskrit or English, but he read quite a bit of the Vedas.
Prabhupāda: No, why does he say that the language, he gives that...
Hayagrīva: Probably not.
Prabhupāda: ...everyone has his language. It does not mean that the animals have no language. They have got their own language. The birds have their own language, the Englishmen have their own language, the Indians have their own language. So there are different varieties of life, and each one has his own language.
Hayagrīva: Although Huxley was called...
Prabhupāda: Language is not the important. The education is important. A developed human being can take real education, while the animals are not able to take. That you can define. It is not the question of language. Knowledge can be imparted, in particular knowledge, a language, just like we are imparting Vedic knowledge in English. So it is not the language, it is the knowledge. But the animals cannot take the knowledge of God. That is their defective. But a human form of body or a human being, it doesn't matter in what language he speaks, but if the knowledge of God is properly imparted in him, then he can understand. The dog cannot understand. That is the difference.