Mental Evolution in Man 46

Mental Evolution in Man 46

For my own part, I think it highly probable that there is an element

of truth in the Yeo-he-ho theory, although I deem it in the last

degree improbable that imitative sounds of this kind constituted the

_only_ source of aboriginal speech. At the most, it seems to me, this

branch of onomatopœia can be accredited with supporting but a small

proportional part of aboriginal language-growth. Nevertheless, as

already observed, I can have no doubt at all that the principle of

onomatopœia in all its branches has been the most important of all

principles which were concerned in the first genesis of speech. That is

to say, I fully agree with the almost unanimous voice of philological

authority on this matter, which may be tersely expressed by allowing

Professor Whitney to act as spokesman.

 

“Beyond all reasonable question, there was a positively long period

of purely imitative signs, and a longer one of mixed imitative and

traditional ones, the latter gradually gaining upon the former, before

the present condition of things was reached, when the production of new

signs by imitation is only sporadic and of the utmost rarity, and all

language-signs besides are traditional, their increase in any community

being solely caused by variation and combination, and by borrowing from

other communities.”[209]

 

But now, having thus stated as emphatically as possible my acceptance

of the theory of onomatopœia, I have to express dissent from many of

its more earnest advocates where they represent that it is necessarily

the only theory to be entertained. In other words, I do not agree with

the dogma that articulate speech cannot possibly have had any source,

or sources, other than that which is supplied by vocal imitations.[210]

For, on merely antecedent grounds, I can see no adequate reason for

arbitrarily excluding the possibility of arbitrary invention. If even

civilized children, who are not under the discipline of the “mother

of invention,” will coin a language of their own in which the element

of onomatopœia is barely traceable;[211] and if uneducated deaf-mutes

will spontaneously devise articulate sounds which are necessarily

destitute of any imitative origin;[212] I do not see why it should be

held antecedently impossible that primitive man can have found any

other means of word-formation than that which is supplied by mimicry.

Therefore, while I fully agree with Professor Wundt in holding that

the question before us is one to be dealt with by psychology rather

than philology (seeing that language cannot record the conditions of

its own birth, and that so many causes have been at work to obliterate

aboriginal onomatopœia), I cannot follow him where he argues that

on grounds of psychology there is no room for any other inference

than that the principle of onomatopœia in its widest sense must have

constituted the sole origin of significant articulation.[213]

 

We have already seen that even the most imitative of vocalists, the

talking birds, will invent wholly arbitrary sounds as denotative

names,[214] and it would be psychologically absurd to suppose that

they are superior to what primitive man must have been in the matter

of finding expedients for semiotic utterance. Again, the clicks of

Hottentots and Bushmen, whatever we suppose their origin to have been,

certainly cannot have had that origin in onomatopœia; and no less

certainly, as Professor Sayce remarks, they still survive to show how

the utterances of speechless man could be made to embody and convey

ideas.[215] Lastly, on the general principle that the development of

the individual furnishes information touching the development of the

race, it is highly significant that the _hitherto speechless_ child

will spontaneously use arbitrary sounds (both articulate and otherwise)

whereby to denotate habitual recepts. And even after it has begun to

learn the use of actual words, arbitrary additions are frequently

made to its vocabulary which defy any explanation at the hands of

onomatopœia—not only, as in the cases above alluded to, where they are

left to themselves, but even in cases where they are in the closest

contact with language as spoken by their elders. I could quote many

instances of this fact; but it will be enough to refer to one already

given on page 144 (foot-note). When, however, these spontaneous efforts

are not controlled by constant association with elders, but fostered

by children of about the same age being left much together, the

remarkable consequence previously alluded to arises—namely, a newly

devised language which depends but in small part upon the principle

of onomatopœia, and is therefore wholly unintelligible to all but its

inventors.[216]

 

I have now briefly stated all the main facts and considerations

which appear to me worth stating, both for and against the theory of

onomatopœia. And, having done this, I wish in conclusion to make it

clear that the matter is not one which seriously affects the theory of

evolution. To the philologist, no doubt, the question as to how far

the element of onomatopœia entered into the formation of aboriginal

speech is a really important question, so that, as Geiger says,

“Diess ist die gemeinsame Frage, und die antwort wird auf der einen

Seite von einem inneren Zusammenhang zwischen je einem Laut und dem

entsprechenden Begriffe, auf der andern aus Willkür und Uebereinkunft

hergeleitet.”[217] But the question is one which the evolutionist may

view with indifference. Whether words were all originally dependent

on an inherent connection between every sound they made and the idea

thereby expressed, or whether they were all due to arbitrary invention,

in either case the evolutionist may see that they can equally well have

come into existence as the natural products of a natural psychogenesis.

And, _a fortiori_, as an evolutionist, he need not greatly concern

himself with any further question as to the relative degrees in which

imitation and invention may have entered into the composition of

primitive speech.

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER XIV.

 

THE WITNESS OF PHILOLOGY.

 

 

We are now in a position to consider certain matters which are of high

importance in relation to the subject of the present work. In earlier

chapters I have had occasion to show that the whole stress of the

psychological distinction between man and brute must be laid—and, in

point of fact, has been laid by all competent writers who are against

me—on the distinctively human faculty of judgment. Moreover, I have

shown that, by universal consent, this faculty is identical with that

of predication. Any mind that is able, in the strict psychological

signification of the term, to judge, is also able to predicate, and

_vice versâ_. I claim, indeed, to have conclusively shown that certain

writers have been curiously mistaken in their analysis of predication.

These mistakes on their part, however, do not relieve me of the

burden of explaining the rise of predication; and I have sought to

discharge the burden by showing how the faculty must have been given

in germ so soon as the denotative stage of sign-making passed into the

connotative, and thus furnished the condition to bringing into contact,

or _apposition_, the names of objects and the names of qualities or

actions. The discussion of this important matter, however, has so far

proceeded on grounds of psychological analysis alone. The point has

now arrived when we may turn upon the subject the independent light

of philological analysis. Whereas we have hitherto considered, on

grounds of mental science only, what _must have been_ the genesis of

predication—supposing predication to have had a genesis,—we have

next to ascertain whether our deduction admits of corroboration by any

inductive evidence supplied by the science of language, as to what this

genesis _actually was_.

 

And here I had better say at once that the results of philological

science will be found to carry us back to an even more primitive state

of matters than any which I have hitherto contemplated. For, so long

as I was restricted to psychological analysis, I was obliged to follow

my opponents where they take language as it now exists. In order to

argue with them at all upon these grounds, it was necessary for me to

consider what they had said on the philosophy of predication; and, in

order to do this, it was further necessary that I should postpone for

independent treatment those results of philological inquiry which they

have everywhere ignored. But now we have come to the place where we

can afford to abandon psychological analysis altogether, and take our

stand upon the still surer ground of what I have already termed the

palæontological record of mental evolution as this has actually been

preserved in the stratified deposits of language. Now, when we do this,

we shall find that hitherto we have not gone so far back in tracing the

genesis of conceptual out of receptual ideation as in point of fact we

are able to go on grounds of the most satisfactory evidence.

 

Up to this time, then, I have been meeting my opponents on their own

assumptions, and one of these assumptions has been that language must

always have existed as we now know it—at least to the extent of

comprising words which admit of being built up into propositions to

express the semiotic intention of the speaker. But this assumption

is well known by philologists to be false. As a matter of fact,

language did not begin with any of our later-day distinctions between

nouns, verbs, adjectives, prepositions, and the rest: it began as the

undifferentiated protoplasm of speech, out of which all these “parts

of speech” had afterwards to be developed by a prolonged course of

gradual evolution.” Die Sprache ist nicht stückweis order atomistisch;

sie ist gleich in allen ihren Theilen als Ganzes und demnach organisch

entstanden.”[218]

 

This highly general and most important fact is usually stated as it

was, I believe, first stated by the anthropologist Waitz, namely,

that “the unit of language is not the word, but the sentence;”[219]

and, therefore, that historically the sentence preceded the word.

Or, otherwise and less ambiguously expressed, every word was

originally itself a proposition, in the sense that of and by itself

it conveyed a statement. Of course the more that a single word thus

assumed the functions now discharged by several words when built

into a proposition, the more generalized—that is to say, the less

defined—must have been its meaning. The sentence or proposition as

we now have it represents what may be termed a psychological division

of labour as devolving upon its component parts: subject-words,

attributive-words, qualifying-words indicative of time, place, agent,

instrument, and so forth, are now all so many different organs

of language, which are set apart for the performance of as many

different functions of language. The life of language under this its

fully evolved form is, therefore, much more complex, and capable of

much more refined operations, than it was while still in the wholly

undifferentiated condition which we have now to contemplate.

 

In order to gain a clear conception of this protoplasmic condition of

language, we had better first take an example of it as it is presented

to our actual observation in the child which is just beginning to

speak. For instance, as Professor Max Müller points out, “if a child

says ‘Up,’ that _up_ is, to his mind, noun, verb, adjective, all in

one. If an English child says ‘Ta,’ that _ta_ is both noun (thanks),

and a verb (I thank you). Nay, even if a child learns to speak

grammatically, it does not yet think grammatically; it seems, in

speaking, to wear the garments of its parents, though it has not yet

grown into them.”[220]

 

Again, as Professor Friedrich Müller says, “the child’s word _Ba-ba_,

sleep, does not mean sleep only, as a particular kind of repose, but

rather also all the circumstances which appertain to sleep, such as

cot, bed, bolster, bed-clothes, &c.[221] It likewise and indifferently

means, sleeping, sleepy, sleeper, &c., and may stand for any variety of

propositions, such as “I am sleepy,” “I want to go to sleep,” “He is asleep,” &c.