_An Essay on Man_, Cassirer. Bantam Books, NY, January 1970. Part I: What is Man? Chapter III: From Animal Reactions to Human Responses. pp. 29 – 45. Setting aside the ambitious, contentious and problematic question of the origin of symbolism, and of the human culture based on it, some headway in the definition of man can be made by distinguishing human symbolic activity from the forms of indirect behavior of animals. Empirical research has demonstrated the ability of animals to respond, especially after a period of training, to tokens as if they were responding to something desirable like food, as if they were employing signs as stand-ins for things that are not immediately present. But this research and the study of animal communication lead, in turn, to the necessity of formulating a definition of speech, through which a distinction between emotional, interjectional utterance and objective, propositional language emerges. There is no evidence that even the most sop