Chapter XVII: General Summary and Concluding Remarks (2)

The first great achievement of comparative philology has been that of demonstrating, beyond all possibility of question, that language as it now exists did not appear ready-made, or by way of any specially created intuition. Comparative philology has furnished a completed proof of the fact that language, as we now know it, has been the result of a gradual evolution. In the chapter on “Comparative Philology,” therefore, I briefly traced the principles of language growth, so far as these are now well recognized by all philologists. It was shown, as a matter of classification, that the thousand or more existing languages fall into about one hundred families, all the members of each family being more or less closely allied, while members of different families do not present evidence of genetic affinity. Nevertheless, these families admit of being comprised under larger groups or “orders,” in accordance with certain characteristics of structure, or type, which they present. Of these types all philologists are agreed in distinguishing between the Isolating, the Agglutinating, and the Inflectional. Some philologists make a similar distinction between these and the Polysynthetic, while all are agreed that from the agglutinative the Incorporating type has been derived, and from the inflectional the Analytic.

Passing on from classification to phylogeny, we had to consider the question of genetic relationship between the three main orders, _inter se_, and also between the Polysynthetic type and the Agglutinating. The conflict of authoritative opinion upon this question was shown to have no bearing upon the subject-matter of this treatise, further than to emphasize the doctrine of the polyphylectic origin of language—the probability appearing to be that, regarded as types, both the isolating and the polysynthetic are equally archaic, or, at all events, that they have been of equally independent growth. In this connection I adduced the hypothesis of Dr. Hale, to the effect that the many apparently independent tongues which are spoken by different native tribes of the New World, may have been in large part due to the inventions of accidentally isolated children. The curious correlation between multiplicity of independent tongues and districts favourable to the life of unprotected children—in Africa as well as in America—seemed to support this hypothesis; while good evidence was given to show that children, if left much alone, do invent for themselves languages which have little or no resemblance to that of their parents.

Without recapitulating all that was said upon the phases and causes of linguistic evolution in its various lines of descent, it will be enough to remind the reader that in every case the result of philological inquiry is here the same—namely, to find that languages become simpler in their structure the further they are traced backwards, until we arrive at their so-called “roots.” These are sometimes represented as the mysterious first principles of language, or even as the aboriginal _data_ whose origin is inexplicable. As a matter of fact, however, these roots are nothing more than the ultimate results of philological analysis: in no other sense than this can they be supposed “primary.” Seeing, then, that these roots represent the materials of language up to the place where the evolution of language no longer admits of being clearly traced, it is evident that their antecedents, whatever they may have been, necessarily lie beyond the reach of philological demonstration, as distinguished from philological inference. This, of course, is what an evolutionist knows antecedently _must be the case somewhere_ in the course of any inquiry touching the process of evolution, wherever he may have occasion to trace it. For the further he is able to trace it, the nearer must he be coming to the place where the very material which he is investigating has taken its origin; and as it is this material itself which furnishes the evidences of evolution, when it has been traced back to its own origin, the inquiry reaches a vanishing point. Adopting the customary illustration of a tree, we might say that when a philologist has traced the development of the leaves from the twigs, the twigs from the branches, the branches from the stems, and the stems from the roots, he has given to the evolutionist all the evidence of evolution which in this particular line of inquiry is antecedently possible. The germ of ideation out of which the roots developed must obviously lie beyond the reach of the philologist as such; and if any light is to be thrown upon the nature of this germ, or if any evidence is to be yielded of the phases whereby the germ gave origin to the roots, this must be done by some other lines of inquiry finding similar germs giving rise to similar products elsewhere. In the present instance, the only place where we can look for such parallel processes of evolution is in the case of the growing child, which I have already considered.

Here, then, we are in the presence of exactly the same distinction with regard to the origin of Language, as we were at the beginning of this treatise with regard to the origin of Man. For we there saw that, while we have the most cogent historical proof of the principles of evolution having governed the progress of civilization, we have no such direct proof of the descent of man from a brutal ancestry. And here likewise we find that, so long as the light of philology is able to guide us, there can be no doubt that the principles of evolution have determined the gradual development of languages, in a manner strictly analogous to that in which they have determined the ever-increasing refinement and complexity of social organizations. Now, in the latter case we saw that such direct evidence of evolution from lower to higher levels of culture renders it well-nigh certain that the method must have extended backwards beyond the historical period; and hence that such direct evidence of evolution uniformly pervading the historical period in itself furnishes a strong _primâ facie_ presumption that this period was itself reached by means of a similarly gradual development of human faculty. And thus, also, it is in the case of language. If philology is able to prove the fact of evolution in all known languages as far back as the primitive roots out of which they have severally grown, the presumption becomes exceedingly strong that these earliest and simplest elements, like their later and more complex products, were the result of a natural growth. Or, in the words already quoted from Geiger, we cannot forbear concluding that language must once have had no existence at all. Nevertheless, it is important to distinguish between demonstrated fact and speculative inference, however strong; and, therefore, I began by stating the stages of evolution through which languages are now known to have passed from the root-stage upwards. Having done this, I proceeded to consider the question touching the origin of these roots themselves.

First, as to their number, we found that the outside estimate, in the younger days of philological research, gave one thousand as a fair average of the roots which go to feed any living language; but that this estimate might now be safely reduced by three-fourths. Indeed, in his latest work, Professor Max Müller professes to have reduced the roots of Sanskrit to as low a number as 121, and thinks that even this is excessive. Regarding the character of roots, we saw that some philologists look upon them as the actual words which were used by the pre-historic speakers, who, therefore, “talked with one another in single syllables, indicative of ideas of prime importance, but wanting all designation of their relations.”[335] On the other hand, it is now the generally accepted belief, that “roots are the phonetic and significant types discovered by the analysis of the comparative philologist as common to a group of allied words,”[336]—or, as it were, composite phonograms of families of words long since extinct as individuals. We saw, however, that this difference of opinion among philologists does not affect the present inquiry, seeing that even the phonetic-type theory does not question that the unknown words out of the composition of which a root is now extracted must have been genetically allied with one another, and exhibited the closeness of their kinship by a close similarity of their sounds.

A much more important question for us is the character of these roots with respect to their significance. In this connection we found that they indicate what Professor Max Müller calls “general ideas,” or “concepts;” bear testimony to an already and, comparatively speaking, advanced stage of social culture; are all expressive either of actions or states; and betray no signs of imitative origin. Taking each of these characters separately, we found that although all the 121 roots of Sanskrit are expressive of general ideas, the order of generality is so low as for the most part to belong to that which I had previously called “lower concepts,” or “named recepts.” Next, that they all bear intrinsic testimony to their own comparatively recent origin, and, therefore, are “primitive” only in the sense of representing the last result of philological analysis: they certainly are very far from primitive in the sense of being aboriginal. Again, that they are all of the nature of verbs was shown to be easily explicable; and, lastly, the fact that none of them betray any imitative source is not to be wondered at, even on the supposition that onomatopœia entered largely into the composition of aboriginal speech. For, on the one hand, we saw that in the struggle for existence among aboriginal and early words, those only could have stood any chance of survival—_i.e._ of leaving progeny—which had attained to some degree of connotative extension, or “generality;” and, on the other hand, that in order to do this an onomatopoetic word must first have lost its onomatopoetic significance. A large body of evidence was adduced in support of the onomatopoetic theory, and certain objections which have been advanced against it were, I think, thoroughly controverted. Later on, however, we saw that the question as to the degree in which onomatopœia entered in to the construction of aboriginal speech is really a question of secondary interest to the evolutionist. Whether in the first instance words were all purely arbitrary, all imitative, or some arbitrary and some imitative,—in any case the course of their subsequent evolution would have been the same. By connotative extension in divergent lines, meanings would have been progressively multiplied in those lines through all the progeny of ever-multiplying terms—just in the same way as we find to be the case in “baby-talk,” and as philologists have amply proved to be the case with the growth of languages in general.

That speech from the first should have been concerned with the naming of generic ideas, or higher recepts, as well as with particular objects of sense, is what the evolutionist would antecedently expect. It must be remembered that the kind of classification with which recepts are concerned is that which lies nearest to the automatic groupings of sensuous perception: it depends on an absence of any power analytically to distinguish less perceptible points of difference among more conspicuous points of resemblance—or non-essential analogies among essential analogies with which they happen to be frequently associated in experience. On the other hand, the kind of classification with which concepts are concerned is that which lies furthest from the automatic groupings of sensuous perception: it depends on the power of analytically distinguishing between essentials and non-essentials among resemblances which occur associated together in experience. Classification there doubtless is in both cases; but in the one it is due to the obviousness of analogies, while in the other it is due to the mental dissociation of analogies as apparent and real. Or else, in the one case it is due to constancy of association in experience of the objects, attributes, actions, &c., classified; while in the other case it is due to a conscious disregard of such association.

Now, if we remember these things, we can no longer wonder that the palæontology of speech should prove early roots to have been expressive of “generic,” as distinguished from “general” ideas. The naming of actions and processes so habitual, or so immediately apparent to perception, as those to which the “121 concepts” tabulated by Professor Max Müller refer, does not betoken an order of ideation very much higher than the pre-conceptual, in virtue of which a young child is able to give expression to its higher receptual life, prior to the advent of self-consciousness. In view of these considerations, my only wonder is that the 121 root-words do not present _better_ evidence of conceptual thought. This, however, only shows how comparatively small a part self-conscious reflection need play in the practical life of early man, even when so far removed from the really “primitive” condition of hitherto wordless man as was that of the pastoral people who have left this record of ideation in the roots of Aryan speech.

After having thus explained the absence of words significant of “particular ideas” among the roots of existing language, as well as the generic character of those which the struggle for existence has permitted to come down to us, we went on to consider sundry other corroborations of our previous analysis which are yielded by the science of philology. First we saw that this science has definitely proved two general facts with regard to the growth of predication—namely, that in all the still existing radical languages there is no distinction between noun, adjective, verb, or particle; and that the structure of all other languages shows this to have been the primitive condition of language-structure in general: “every noun and every verb was originally by itself a complete sentence,” consisting of a subject and predicate fused into one—or rather, let us say, not yet differentiated into the _two_, much less into the _three_ parts which now go to constitute the fully evolved structure of a proposition. Now, this form of predication is “condensed” only because it is undeveloped; it is the undifferentiated protoplasm of predication, wherein the “parts of speech” as yet have no existence. And just as this, the earliest stage of predication, is distinctive of the pre-conceptual stage of ideation in a child, so it is of the pre-conceptual ideation of the race. Abundant evidence was therefore given of the gradual evolution of predicative utterance, _pari passu_ with conceptual thought—evidence which is woven through the whole warp and woof of every language which is now spoken by man. In particular, we saw that pronouns were originally words indicative of space relations, and strongly suggestive of accompanying acts of pointing—“I” being equivalent to “this one,” “He” to “that one,” &c. Moreover, just as the young child begins by speaking of itself in the third person, so “Man regarded himself as an object before he learnt to regard himself as a subject,”[337] as is proved by the fact that “the objective cases of the personal as well as of the other pronouns, are always older than the subjective.”[338] Pronominal elements afterwards became affixed to nouns and verbs, when these began to be differentiated from one another; and thus various applications of a primitive and highly generalized noun or verb were rendered by means of these elements, which, as even Professor Max Müller allows, “must be considered as remnants of the earliest and almost pantomimic phase of language, in which language was hardly as yet what we mean by language, namely _logos_, a gathering, but only a pointing.” Similarly, Professor Sayce remarks of this stage in the evolution of predicative utterance—which, be it observed, is precisely analogous to that occupied by a young child whose highly generalized words require to be assisted by gestures—“It is certain that there was a time in the history of speech when articulate or semi-articulate sounds uttered by primitive man were made the significant representations of thought by the gestures with which they were accompanied: and this complex of sound and gesture—a complex in which, be it remembered, the sound had no meaning apart from the gesture—was the earliest sentence.” Thus it was that “grammar has grown out of gesture”—different parts of speech, with the subsequent commencements of declension, conjugation, &c., being all so many children of gesticulation: but when in subsequent ages the parent was devoured by this youthful progeny, they continued to pursue an independent growth in more or less divergent lines of linguistic development.

For instance, we have abundant evidence to prove that, even after articulate language had gained a firm footing, there was no distinction between the nominative and genitive cases of substantives, nor between these and adjectives, nor even between any words as subject-words and predicate-words. All these three grammatical relations required to be expressed in the same way, namely, by a mere apposition of the generalized terms themselves. In course of time, however, these three grammatical differentiations were effected by conventional changes of position between the words apposed, in some cases the form of predication being A B, and that of attribution or possession B A, while in other branches of language-growth the reverse order has obtained. Eventually, however, “these primitive contrivances for distinguishing between the predicate, the attribute, and the genitive, when the three ideas had in course of ages been evolved by the mind of the speaker, gradually gave way to the later and more refined machinery of suffixes, auxiliaries, and the like.”[339]

And so it is with all the other so-called “parts of speech,” in those languages which, in having passed beyond the primitive stage, have developed parts of speech at all. “These are the very broadest outlines of the process by which conceptual roots were predicated, by which they came under the sway of the categories—became substantives, adjectives, adverbs, and verbs, or by whatever other names the results thus obtained may be described. The minute details of this process, and the marvellous results obtained by it, can be studied in the grammar of every language or family of languages.”[340] Thus, philology is able to trace back, stage by stage, the form of predication as it occurs in the most highly developed, or inflective language, to that earliest stage of language in general, which I have called the indicative.

Many other authorities having been quoted in support of these general statements, and also for the purpose of tracing the evolution of predicative utterance in more detail, I proceeded to give illustrations of different phases of its development in the still existing languages of savages; and thus proved that they, no less than primitive man, are unable to “supply the blank form of a judgment,” or to furnish what my opponents regard as the criterion of human faculty. Therefore, the only policy which can possibly remain for these opponents to take up, is that of abandoning their Aristotelian position: no longer to take their stand upon the grounds of purely _formal_ predication as this happens to have been developed in the Indo-European branch of language; but altogether upon those of _material_ predication, or, as I may say, upon the meaning or substance of a judgment, as distinguished from its grammar or accidents.

In other words, it may possibly still be argued that, although the issue is now thrown back from the “blank form” of predication on which my opponents have hitherto relied, to the hard fact of predication itself, this hard fact still remains. Even though I have shown that in the absence of any parts of speech predication requires to be conducted in a most inefficient manner; still, it may be said, predication _is_ conducted, and _must be_ conducted—for assuredly it is only in order to conduct it that speech can ever have existed at all.

Now, I showed that if my opponents do not adopt this change of position, their argument is at an end. For I proved that, after all the foregoing evidence, there is no longer any possibility of question touching the continuity of growth between the predicative germ in a sentence-word, and the fully evolved structure of a formal proposition. But, on the other hand, I next showed that this change of position, even if it were made, could be of no avail. For, if the term “predication” be thus extended to a “sentence-word,” it thereby becomes deprived of that distinctive meaning upon which alone the whole argument of my adversaries is reared: it is conceded that no distinction obtains between speaking and pointing: the predicative phase of language has been identified with the indicative: man and brute are acknowledged to be “brothers.” That is to say, if it be maintained that the indicative signs of the infant child or the primitive man are predicative, no shadow of a reason can be assigned for withholding this designation from the indicative signs of the lower animals. On the other hand, if this term be denied to both, its application to the case of spoken language in its fully evolved form must be understood to signify but a difference of phase or degree, seeing that the one order of sign-making has been now so completely proved to be but the genetic and improved descendant of the other. In short, the truth obviously is that we have _a proved continuity of development between all stages of the sign-making faculty_; and, therefore, that any attempt to draw between one and another of them a distinction of kind has been shown to be impossible.

The conclusions thus reached at the close of Chapter XIV. with regard to the philology of predication were greatly strengthened by additional facts which were immediately adduced in the next Chapter with regard to the philology of conception. Here the object was to throw the independent light of philology upon a point which had already been considered as a matter of psychology, namely, the passage of receptual denotation into conceptual denomination. This is a point which had previously been considered only with reference to the individual: it had now to be considered with reference to the race.

First it was shown that, owing to the young child being surrounded by an already constructed grammar of predicative forms, the earlier phases in the evolution of speech are greatly foreshortened in the ontogeny of mankind, as compared with what the study of language shows them to have been in the phylogeny. Gesture-signs are rapidly starved out when a child of to-day first begins to speak, and so to learn the use of grammatical forms. But early man was under the necessity of elaborating his grammar out of his gesture-signs—and this at the same time as he was also coining his sentence-words. Therefore, while the acquisition of names and forms of speech by infantile man must have depended in chief part upon gestures and grimace, this acquisition by the infantile child is actively inimical to both.

Next we saw that the philological doctrine of “sentence-words” threw considerable additional light on my psychological distinction between ideas as general and generic. For a sentence-word is the expression of an idea hitherto _generalized_, that is to say _undifferentiated_. Such an idea, as we now know, stands at the antipodes of thought from one which is due to what is called a _generalization_—that is to say, a conceptual synthesis of the results of a previous analysis. And the doctrine of sentence-words recognizes an immense historical interval (corresponding with the immense psychological interval) between the generic and the general orders of ideation.

Again, we saw that in all essential particulars the semiotic construction of this the most primitive mode of articulate communication which has been preserved in the archæology of spoken language, bears a precise resemblance to that which occurs in the natural language of gesture. As we saw, “gesture-language has no grammar properly so called;” and we traced in considerable detail the analogies—so singularly numerous and exact—between the forms of sentences as now revealed in gesture and as they first emerged in the early days of speech. In other words, the earliest record that speech is able to yield as to the nature of its own origin, clearly reveals to us this origin as emerging from the yet more primitive language of tone and gesture. For this is the only available explanation of their close family resemblance in the matter of syntax.

Furthermore, we have seen that in gesture language, as in the forms of primitive speech now preserved in roots, the purposes of predication are largely furthered by the mere apposition of denotative terms. A generalized term of this kind (which as yet is neither noun, adjective, nor verb), when brought into apposition with another of the same kind, serves to convey an idea of relationship between them, or to state something of the one by means of the other. Yet apposition of this kind need betoken no truly conceptual thought. As we have already seen, the laws of merely sensuous association are sufficient to insure that when the objects, qualities, or events, which the terms severally denote, happen to occur together in Nature, they _must_ be thus brought into corresponding apposition by the mind: it is the logic of events which inevitably guides such pre-conceptual utterance into a statement of the truth that is perceived: the truth is _received into_ the mind, not _conceived by_ it. And it is obvious how repeated statements of truth thus delivered in receptual ideation, lead onwards to conceptual ideation, or to statements of truth as true.

Now, if all this has been the case, it is obvious that aboriginal words can have referred only to matters of purely receptual significance—_i.e._ “to those physical acts and qualities which are directly apprehensible by the senses.” Accordingly, we find in all the earliest root-words, which the science of philology has unearthed, unquestionable and unquestioned evidence of “fundamental metaphor,” or of a conceptual extension of terms which were previously of no more than receptual significance. Indeed, as Professor Whitney says, “so pervading is it, that we never regard ourselves as having read the history of any intellectual or moral term till we have traced it back to its physical origin.” Without repeating all that I have so recently said upon this matter, it will be enough once more to insist on the general conclusions to which it led—namely, psychological analysis has already shown us the psychological priority of the recept; and now philological research most strikingly corroborates this analysis by actually finding the recept in the body of every concept.

Lastly, I took a brief survey of the languages now spoken by many widely separated races of savages, in order to show the extreme deficiency of conceptual ideation that is thus represented. In the result, we saw that what Archdeacon Farrar calls “the hopeless poverty of the power of abstraction” is so surprising, that the most ardent evolutionist could not well have desired a more significant intermediary between the pre-conceptual intelligence of _Homo alalus_, and the conceptual thought of _Homo sapiens_.

* * * * *

Having thus concluded the Philology of our subject, I proceeded, in the last chapter, to consider the probable steps of the transition from receptual to conceptual ideation in the race.

First I dealt with a view which has been put forward on this matter by certain German philologists, to the effect that speech originated in wholly meaningless sounds, which in the first instance were due to merely physiological conditions. By repeated association with the circumstances under which they were uttered, these articulate sounds are supposed to have acquired, as it were automatically, a semiotic value. The answer to this hypothesis, however, evidently is, that it ignores the whole problem which stands to be solved—namely, the genesis of those powers of ideation which first put a soul of meaning into the previously insignificant sounds. That is to say, it begs the whole question which stands for solution, and, therefore, furnishes no explanation whatsoever of the difference which has arisen between man and brute. Nevertheless, the principles set forth in this the largest possible extension of the so-called interjectional theory, are, I believe, sound enough in themselves: it is only the premiss from which in this instance they start that is untrue. This premiss is that aboriginal man presented no rudiments of the sign-making faculty, and, therefore, that this faculty itself required to be created _de novo_ by accidental associations of sounds with things. But we have seen, as a matter of fact, that this must have been very far from having been the case; and, therefore, while recognizing such elements of truth as the “purely physiological” hypothesis in question presents, I rejected it as in itself not even approaching a full explanation of the origin of speech.

Next I dealt with the hypothesis that was briefly sketched by Mr. Darwin. Premising, as Geiger points out, that the presumably superior sense of sight, by fastening attention upon the movements of the mouth in vocal sign-making, must have given our simian ancestry an advantage over other species of quadrumana in the matter of associating sounds with receptual ideas; we next endeavoured to imagine an anthropoid ape, social in habits, sagacious in mind, and accustomed to use its voice extensively as an organ of sign-making, after the manner of social quadrumana in general. Such an animal might well have distanced all others in the matter of making signs, and even proceeded far enough to use sounds in association with gestures, as “sentence-words”—_i.e._ as indicative of such highly generalized recepts as the presence of danger, &c.,—even if it did not go the length of making denotative sounds, after the manner of talking-birds. Moreover, as Mr. Darwin has pointed out, there is a strong probability that this simian ancestor of mankind was accustomed to use its voice in musical cadences, “as do some of the gibbon-apes at the present day;” and this habit might have laid the basis for that semiotic interruption of vocal sounds in which consists the essence of articulation.

My own theory of the matter, however, is slightly different to this. For, while accepting all that goes to constitute the substance of Mr. Darwin’s suggestion, I think it is almost certain that the faculty of articulate sign-making was a product of much later evolution, so that the creature who first presented this faculty must have already been more human than “ape-like.” This _Homo alalus_ stands before the mind’s eye as an almost brutal object, indeed; yet still, erect in attitude, shaping flints to serve as tools and weapons, living in tribes or societies, and able in no small degree to communicate the logic of his recepts by means of gesture-signs, facial expressions, and vocal tones. From such an origin, the subsequent evolution of sign-making faculty in the direction of articulate sounds would be an even more easy matter to imagine than it was under the previous hypothesis. Having traced the probable course of this evolution, as inferred by the aid of sundry analogies; and having dwelt upon the remarkable significance in this connection of the inarticulate sounds which still survive as so-called “clicks” in the lowly-formed languages of Africa; I went on to detail sundry considerations which seemed to render probable the prolonged existence of the imaginary being in question—traced the presumable phases of his subsequent evolution, and met the objection which might be raised on the score of _Homo alalus_ being _Homo postulatus_.

In conclusion, however, I pointed out that whatever might be the truth as touching the time when the faculty of articulation arose, the course of mental evolution, after it did arise, must have been the same. Without again repeating the sketch which I gave of what this course must have been, it will be enough to say, in the most general terms, that I believe it began with sentence-words in association with gesture-signs; that these acted and reacted on one another to the higher elaboration of both; that denotative names, for the most part of onomatopoetic origin, rapidly underwent connotative extensions; that from being often and necessarily used in apposition, nascent predications arose; that these gave origin, in later times, to the grammatical distinctions between adjectives and genitive cases on the one hand, and predicative words on the other; that likewise gesture-signs were largely concerned in the origin of other grammatical forms, especially of pronominal elements, many of which afterwards went to constitute the material out of which the forms of declension and conjugation were developed; but that although pronouns were thus among the earliest words which were differentiated by mankind as separate parts of speech, it was not until late in the day that any pronouns were used especially indicative of the first person. The significance of this latter fact was shown to be highly important. We have already seen that the whole distinction between man and brute resides in the presence or absence of conceptual thought, which, in turn, is but an expression of the presence or absence of self-consciousness. Consequently, the whole of this treatise has been concerned with the question whether we have here to do with a distinction of kind or of degree—of origin or of development. In the case of the individual, there can be no doubt that it is a distinction of degree, or development; and I had previously shown that in this case the phase of development in question is marked by a change of phraseology—a discarding of objective terms for the adoption of subjective when the speaker has occasion to speak of self. And now I showed that in the fact here before us we have a precisely analogous proof: in exactly the same way as psychology marks for us “the transition in the individual,” philology marks for us “the transition in the race.”

In the foregoing _résumé_ of the present instalment of my work I have aimed only at giving an outline sketch of the main features. And even these main features have been so much abbreviated that it is questionable whether more harm than good will not have been done to my argument by so imperfect a summary of it. Nevertheless, as a general result, I think that two things must now have been rendered apparent to every impartial mind. First, that the opponents of evolution have conspicuously failed to discharge their _onus probandi_, or to justify the allegation that the human mind constitutes a great and unique exception to the otherwise uniform law of evolution. Second, that not only is this allegation highly improbable _a priori_, and incapable of proof _a posteriori_, but that all the evidence that can possibly be held to bear upon the subject makes directly on the side of its disproof. The only semblance of an argument to be adduced in its favour rests upon the distinction between ideation as conceptual and non-conceptual. That such a distinction exists I freely admit; but that it is a distinction of kind I emphatically deny. For I have shown that the comparatively few writers who still continue to regard it as such, found their arguments on a psychological analysis which is of a demonstrably imperfect character; that no one of them has ever paid any attention at all to the actual process of psychogenesis as this occurs in a growing child; and that, with the exception of Professor Max Müller, the same has to be said with regard to their attitude towards the “witness of philology.” Touching the psychogenesis of a child, I have shown that there is unquestionable demonstration of a gradual and uninterrupted passage from the one order of ideation to the other; that so long as the child’s intelligence is moving only in the non-conceptual sphere, it is not distinguishable in any one feature of psychological import from the intelligence of the higher mammalia; that when it begins to assume the attributes of conceptual ideation, the process depends on the development of true self-consciousness out of the materials supplied by that form of pre-existing or receptual self-consciousness which the infant shares with the lower animals; that the condition to this advance in mental evolution is given by a perceptibly progressive development of those powers of denotative and connotative utterance which are found as far down in the psychological scale as the talking birds; that in the growing intelligence of a child we have thus as complete a history of “ontogeny,” in its relation to “phylogeny,” as that upon which the embryologist is accustomed to rely when he reads the morphological history of a species in the epitome which is furnished by the development of an individual; and, therefore, that those are without excuse who, elsewhere adopting the principles of evolution, have gratuitously ignored the direct evidence of psychological transmutation which is thus furnished by the life-history of every individual human being.

Again, as regards the independent witness of philology, if we were to rely on authority alone, the halting and often contradictory opinions which from time to time have been expressed by Professor Max Müller with reference to our subject, are greatly outweighed by those of all his brother philologists. But, without in any way appealing to authority further than to accept matters of fact on which all philologists are agreed, I have purposely given Professor Max Müller an even more representative place than any of the others, fully stated the nature of his objections, and supplied what appears to me abundantly sufficient answers. So far as I can understand the reasons of his dissent from conclusions which his own admirable work has materially helped to support, they appear to arise from the following grounds. First, a want of clearness with regard to the principles of evolution in general:[341] second, a failure clearly or constantly to recognize that the roots of Aryan speech are demonstrably very far from primitive in the sense of being aboriginal: third, a want of discrimination between ideas as general and generic, or synthetic and unanalytical: fourth, the gratuitous and demonstrably false assumption that in order to name a mind must first conceive. Of these several grounds from which his dissent appears to spring, the last is perhaps the most important, seeing that it is the one upon which he most expressly rears his objections. But if I have proved anything, I have proved that there is a power of affixing verbal or other signs as marks of merely receptual associations, and that this power is _invariably_ antecedent to the origin of conceptual utterance in the only case where this origin admits of being directly observed—_i.e._, in the psychogenesis of a child. Again, in the case of pre-historic man, so far as the palæontology of speech furnishes evidence upon the subject, this makes altogether in favour of the view that in the race, as in the individual, denotation preceded denomination, as antecedent and consequent. Nay, I doubt whether Max Müller himself would disagree with Geiger where the latter tersely says, in a passage hitherto unquoted, “Why is it that the further we trace words backwards the less meaning do they present? I know not of any other answer to be given than that the further they go back the less conceptuality do they betoken.”[342] Nor can he refuse to admit, with the same authority, that “conceptual thought (_Begriff_) allows itself to be traced backwards into an ever narrowing circle, and inevitably tends to a point where there is no longer either thought or speech.”[343] But if these things cannot be denied by Max Müller himself, I am at a loss to understand why he should part company with other philologists with regard to the origin of conceptual terms. With them he asserts that there can be no concepts without words (spoken or otherwise), and with them he maintains that when the meanings of words are traced back as far as philology can trace them, they obviously tend to the vanishing point of which Geiger speaks. Yet, merely on the ground that this vanishing point can never be actually reached by the investigations of philology—_i.e._, that words cannot record the history of their own birth,—he stands out for an interruption of the principle of continuity at the place where words originate. A position so unsatisfactory I can only explain by supposing that he has unconsciously fallen into the fallacy of concluding that because all A is B, therefore all B is A. Finding that there can be no concepts without names, he concludes that there can be no names without concepts.[344] And on the basis of such a conclusion he naturally finds it impossible to explain how either names or concepts could have had priority in time: both, it seems, must have been of contemporaneous origin; and, if this were so, it is manifestly impossible to account for the natural genesis of either. But the whole of this trouble is imaginary. Once discard the plainly illogical inference that because names are necessary to concepts, therefore concepts are necessary to names, and the difficulty is at an end. Now, I have proved, _ad nauseam_, that there are names and names: names denotative, and names denominative; names receptual, as well as names conceptual. Even if we had not had the case of the growing child actually to prove the process—a case which he, in common with all my other opponents, in this connexion ignores,—on general grounds alone, and especially from our observations on the lower animals, we might have been practically certain that the faculty of sign-making _must_ have preceded that of _thinking the signs_. And whether these pre-conceptual signs were made by gesture, grimace, intonation, articulation, or all combined, clearly no difference would arise so far as any question of their influence on psychogenesis is concerned. As a matter of fact, we happen to know that the semiotic artifice of articulating vocal tones for purposes of denotation, dates back so far as to bring us within philologically measurable distance of the origin of denomination, or conceptual thought—although we have seen good reason to conclude that before that time tone, gesture, and grimace must have been much more extensively employed in sign-making by aboriginal man than they now are by any of the lower animals. So that, upon the whole, unless it can be shown that my distinction between denotation and denomination is untenable—unless, for instance, it can be shown that an infant requires to think of names as such before it can learn to utter them,—then I submit that no shadow of a difficulty lies against the theory of evolution in the domain of philology. While, on the other hand, all the special facts as well as all the general principles hitherto revealed by this science make entirely for the conclusion, that pre-conceptual denotation laid the psychological conditions which were necessary for the subsequent growth of conceptual denomination; and, therefore, yet once again to quote the high authority of Geiger, “Speech created Reason; before its advent mankind was reasonless.”[345]

And if this is true of philology, assuredly it is no less true of psychology. For “the development of speech is only a copy of that chain of processes, which began with the dawn of [human] consciousness, and eventually ends in the construction of the most abstract idea.”[346] Unless, therefore, it can be shown that my distinction between ideation as receptual and conceptual is invalid, I know not how my opponents are to meet the results of the foregoing analysis. Yet, if this distinction should be denied, not only would they require to construct the science of psychology anew; they would place themselves in the curious position of repudiating the very distinction on which their whole argument is founded. For I have everywhere been careful to place it beyond question that what I have called receptual ideation, in all its degrees, is identical with that which is recognized by my opponents as non-conceptual; and as carefully have I everywhere shown that with them I fully recognize the psychological difference between this order of ideation and that which is conceptual. The only point in dispute, therefore, is as to the possibility of a natural transition from the one to the other. It is for them to show the impossibility. This they have hitherto most conspicuously failed to do. On the other hand, I now claim to have established the possibility beyond the reach of a reasonable question. For I claim to have shown that the _probability_ of such a transition having previously occurred in the race, as it now occurs in every individual, is a probability that has been raised tower-like by the accumulated knowledge of the nineteenth century. Or, to vary the metaphor, this probability has been as a torrent, gaining in strength and volume as it is successively fed by facts and principles poured into it by the advance of many sciences.

Of course it is always easy to withhold assent from a probability, however strong: “My belief,” it may be said, “is not to be wooed; it shall only be compelled.” Indeed, a man may even pride himself on the severity of his requirements in this respect; and in popular writings we often find it taken for granted that any scientific doctrine is then only entitled to be regarded as scientific when it has been demonstrated. But in science, as in other things, belief ought to be proportionate to evidence; and although for this very reason we should ever strive for the attainment of better evidence, scientific caution of such a kind must not be confused with a merely ignorant demand for impossible evidence. Actually to demonstrate the transition from non-conceptual to conceptual ideation in the race, as it is every day demonstrated in the individual, would plainly require the impossible condition that conceptual thought should have observed its own origin. To demand any demonstrative proof of the transition in the race would therefore be antecedently absurd. But if, as Bishop Butler says, “probability is the very guide of life,” assuredly no less is it the very guide of science; and here, I submit, we are in the presence of a probability so irresistible that to withhold from it the embrace of conviction would be no longer indicative of scientific caution, but of scientific incapacity. For if, as I am assuming, we already accept the theory of evolution as applicable throughout the length and breadth of the realm organic, it appears to me that we have positively _better_ reasons for accepting it as applicable to the length and breadth of the realm mental. In other words, looking to all that has now been said, I cannot help feeling that there is actually better evidence of a psychological transition from the brute to the man, than there is of a morphological transition from one organic form to another, in any of the still numerous instances where the intermediate links do not happen to have been preserved. Thus, for example, in my opinion an evolutionist of to-day who seeks to constitute the human mind a great exception to the otherwise uniform principle of genetic continuity, has an even more hopeless case than he would have were he to argue that a similar exception ought to be made with regard to the structure of the worm-like creature Balanoglossus.

If this comparison should appear to betray any extravagant estimate on my part of the cogency of the evidence which has thus far been presented, I will now in conclusion ask it to be remembered that my case is not yet concluded. For hitherto I have almost entirely abstained from considering the mental condition of _savages_. The reason why this important branch of my subject has not been touched is because I reserve it for the next instalment of my work. But when we leave the groundwork of psychological principles on which up to this point we have been engaged, and advance to the wider field of anthropological research in general, we shall find much additional evidence of a more concrete kind, which almost uniformly tends to substantiate the conclusions already gained. The corroboration thus afforded is indeed, to my thinking, superfluous; and, therefore, will not be adduced in this connection. Nevertheless, while tracing the principles of mental evolution from the lowest levels which are actually occupied by existing man, we shall find that no small light is incidentally thrown upon the demonstrably still more primitive intelligence of pre-historic man. Thus shall we find that we are led back by continuous stages to a state of still human ideation, which brings us into contact almost painfully close with that of the higher apes. This, indeed, is a side of the general question which my opponents are prone to ignore—just as they ignore the parallel side which has to do with the psychogenesis of a child. And, of course, when they thus ignore both the child and the savage, so as directly to contrast the adult psychology of civilized man with that of the lower animals, it is easy to show an enormous difference. But where the question is as to whether this is a difference of degree or of kind, the absurdity of disregarding the intermediate phases which present themselves to actual observation is surely too obvious for comment. At all events I think it may be safely promised, that when we come to consider the case of savages, and through them the case of pre-historic man, we shall find that, in the great interval which lies between such grades of mental evolution and our own, we are brought far on the way towards bridging the psychological distance which separates the gorilla from the gentleman.

INDEX.

A

Abstraction. _See_ Ideas

Addison, Mrs. K., on sign-making by a jackdaw, 97

Adjectives, appropriately used by parrots, 129, 130, 152;
early use of, by children, 219;
not differentiated in early forms of speech, 295 _et seq._;
origin of Aryan, 306;
and in language generally, 385-86.

Adverbs not differentiated in early forms of speech, 306

African Bushmen. _See_ Hottentots

African languages. _See_ Languages

Agglomerative. _See_ Languages

Agglutinating. _See_ Languages

American languages. _See_ Languages

Analytic. _See_ Languages

Anatomy, evidence of man’s descent supplied by, 19

Animals. _See_ Brutes

Animism of primitive man, 275

Ants, intelligence of, 52, 53;
sign-making by, 91-95

Apes, brain-weight of, 16;
bodily structure of, 19;
counting by, 58, 215;
understanding of words by, 125, 126;
unable to imitate articulate sounds, 153-157;
psychological characters of anthropoid, in relation to the descent
of man, 364-370;
singing, 370, 373-378;
other vocal sounds made by, 374;
erect attitude assumed by, 381, 382

Appleyard on language of savages, 349

Apposition. _See_ Predication

Aristotle, on intelligence of brutes, 12,
and of man, 20;
his classification of the animal kingdom, 79;
his logic based on grammar of the Greek language, 314, 320

Articulation, chap. vii.;
classification of different kinds of, 121;
meaningless, 121, 122;
understanding of, 122-129;
by dogs, 128;
use of, with intelligent signification by talking birds, 129-139;
arbitrary use of, by young children, 138-144;
relation of, to tone and gesture, 145-162;
importance of sense of sight to development of, 366, 367;
probable period and mode of genesis of in the race, 370-373

Aryan languages. _See_ Languages

Aryan race, civilization of, 272;
antiquity of, 273

Audouin on a monkey recognizing pictorial representations, 188

Axe, discovery of, by neolithic man, 214

B

Barter only used by man, 19

Basque language. _See_ Language

Bateman, Dr. F., on speech-centre of brain, 134, 135

Bates, on intelligence of ants, 92, 93;
on a monkey recognizing pictorial representations, 188.

Bats the only mammals capable of flight, 156

Bear, intelligence of, 51;
understanding tones of human voice, 124

Beattie, Dr., on intelligence of a dog, 100

Bees, sign-making by, 90

Bell, Professor A. Graham, on teaching a dog to articulate, 128;
on the ideation of deaf-mutes, 150

Belt on intelligence of ants, 52, 92

Benfry on roots of Sanskrit, 267

Berkeley on ideas, 21, 22

Binet on analogies between perception and reason, 32
and sensation, 37, 46

Bingley on bees understanding tones of human voice, 124

Bleek, on origin of pronouns, 302;
on the sentence-words of African Bushmen, 316, 337, 338;
on onomatopœia, 339;
on the clicks of Hottentots and African Bushmen, 373

Bonaparte, Prince Lucien, on possible number of articulate sounds, 373

Bopp on the origin of speech, 240

Bowen, Professor F., on psychology of judgment, 167

Boyd Dawkins, Professor, on discovery of axe by neolithic man, 214

Bramston, Miss, on intelligence of a dog, 56

Brazil, climate and native languages of, 262, 263

Brown, Thomas, on generalization, 44

Browning, A. H., on intelligence of a dog, 99, 100

Brutes, mind of, compared with human, 6-39;
emotions of, 7;
instincts of, 8;
volition of, 8;
intellect of, 9;
Mr. Mivart on psychology of, 10, 177;
as machines, 11;
rationality of, 11, 12;
soul of, 12;
Bishop Butler on immortality of, 12;
instances of intelligence of, 51-63;
ideas of causality in, 58-60;
appreciation of principles by, 60, 61;
sign-making by, 88-102;
understanding of words by, 123-127;
articulation by, 128-138, 152;
reasons why none have become intellectual rivals of man, 154-157;
self-consciousness in relation to, 175-178;
recognizing pictorial representations, 188, 189;
conditions to genesis of self-consciousness manifested by, 195-199;
counting by, 56-58, 214, 215;
psychology of, in relation to the descent of man, 364-384

Buffon, on intelligence of brutes, 12, 117;
his parrot, 201

Bunsen, on onomatopœia, 282;
on Egyptian language, 297, 298;
on the substantive verb, 309

Burton on sign-making by Indians, 105

Bushmen, clicks in the language of, 291

Butler, Bishop, on immortality of brutes, 12

C

California, climate and native languages of, 261, 262

Caldwell on language of savages, 349

Carlyle on fundamental metaphor, 344

Carpenter, Commander Alfred, on monkeys using stones to open oysters,
382

Casalis on poverty of savage languages in abstract terms, 351

Cat, intelligence of, 59, 98, 99;
use of signs by, 158

Caterpillars, sign-making by, 95, 96

Causation, ideas of, in brutes, 58-60;
origin of idea of, in man, 210

Cebus, intelligence of, 60, 61;
different tones uttered by, 96