Julien Offray de La Mettrie on Animal cognition

“Among animals, some learn to speak and sing; they remember tunes, and strike the notes as exactly as a musician. Others, for instance the ape, show more intelligence, and yet can not learn music. What is the reason for this... would it be absolutely impossible to teach the ape a language? I do not think so.”

“In general, the form and the structure of the brains of quadrupeds are almost the same as those of the brain of man... with this essential difference, that of all the animals man is the one whose brain is largest, and, in proportion to its mass, more convoluted... then come the monkey, the beaver, the elephant, the dog, the fox, the cat. These animals are most like man, for among them, too, one notes the same progressive analogy in relation to the corpus callosum in which Lancisi—anticipating the late M. de la Peyronie—established the seat of the soul. The latter, however, illustrated the theory by innumerable experiments.”