Mental Evolution in Man 50

Mental Evolution in Man 50

Again, as a result of his prolonged study of some of the most primitive

forms of language still extant among the Bushmen of South Africa, Dr.

Bleek entertains no doubt whatever that aboriginally the same word,

without alteration, implied a substantival or a verbal meaning, and

could be used indifferently also as an adjective, adverb, &c.[253] That

is to say, primitive words were sentence-words, and as such were used

by early man in just the same way as young children use their hitherto

undifferentiated signs, _Byby_ = _sleep_, _sleeping_, _to sleep_,

_sleeper_, _asleep_, _sleepy_, &c.; and, by connotative extension,

_bed_, _bolster_, _bed-clothes_, &c.

 

Lastly, as already indicated, we are not left to mere inference

touching the aboriginal state of matters with regard to predication.

For in many languages still existing we find the forms of predication

in such low phases of development, that they bring us within easy

distance of the time when there can have been no such forms at all.

Even Professor Max Müller allows that there are still existing

languages “in which there is as yet no outward difference between what

we call a root, and a noun or a verb. Remnants of that phase in the

growth of language we can detect even in so highly developed a language

as Sanskrit.” Elsewhere he remarks:—“A child says, ‘I am hungry,’

without an idea that _I_ is different from _hungry_, and that both are

united by an auxiliary verb.... A Chinese child would express exactly

the same idea by one word, ‘Shi,’ _to eat_, or _food_, &c. The only

difference would be that a Chinese child speaks the language of a

child, an English child the language of a man.”[254]

 

It is no doubt remarkable that the Chinese should so long have retained

so primitive a form; but, as we know, the functions of predication

have here been greatly assisted by devices of syntax combined with

conventionally significant intonation, which really constitute Chinese

a well-developed language of a particular type. Among peoples of a

much lower order of mental evolution, however, we are brought into

contact with still more rudimentary forms of predication, inasmuch

as these devices of syntax and intonation have not been evolved. As

previously stated, the most primitive of all actually existing forms

of predication where articulate language is concerned, is that wherein

the functions of a verb are undertaken by the apposition of a noun with

what is equivalent to the genitive case of a pronoun. Thus, in Dayak,

if it is desired to say, “Thy father is old,” “Thy father looks old,”

&c., in the absence of verbs it is needful to frame the predication by

mere apposition, thus:—“Father-of-thee, age-of-him.” Or, to be more

accurate, as the syntax follows that of gesture-language in placing the

predicate before the subject, we should translate the proposition into

its most exact equivalent by saying, “His age, thy father.” Similarly,

if it is required to make such a statement as that “He is wearing a

white jacket,” the form of the statement would be, “He-with-white

with-jacket,” or, as we might perhaps more tersely translate it, “He

jackety whitey.”[255]

 

Again, in Feejee language the functions of a verb may be discharged

by a noun in construction with an oblique pronominal suffix, _e.g._,

_loma-qu_ = heart or will-of-me, = I will.[256]

 

So likewise, “almost all philologists who have paid attention to the

Polynesian languages, concur in observing that the divisions of parts

of speech received by European grammarians are, as far as external form

is concerned, inapplicable, or nearly so, to this particular class. The

same element is admitted to be indifferently substantive, adjective,

verb, or particle.”[257] “I will eat the rice,” would require to be

rendered, “The-eating-of-me-the-rice = My eating will be of the rice.”

“The supposed verb is, in fact, an abstract noun, including in it the

notion of futurity of time in construction with an oblique pronominal

suffix; and the ostensible object of the action is not a regimen in the

accusative case, but an apposition. It is scarcely necessary to say

how irreconcilable this is with the ordinary grammatical definition of

a transitive verb; and that, too, in a construction where we should

expect that true verbs would be infallibly employed, if any existed

in the language.”[258] And, not to overburden the argument with

illustrations, it will be enough to add with this writer, “there can be

no question that nouns in conjunction with oblique cases of pronouns

may be, and, in fact, are employed as verbs. Some of the constructions

above specified admit of no other analysis; and they are no accidental

partial phenomena, but capable of being produced by thousands.”[259]

 

* * * * *

 

It would be easy to multiply quotations from other authorities to the

same effect; but these, I think, are enough to show how completely the

philology of predication destroys the philosophy of predication, as

this has been presented by my opponents. Not only, as already shown,

have they been misled by the verbal accident of certain languages with

which they happen to be familiar identifying the copula with the verb

“to be” (which itself, as we have also seen, has no existence in many

languages); but, as we now see, their analysis is equally at fault

where it deals with the subject and predicate. Such a fully elaborated

form of proposition as “A negro is black,” far from presenting “the

simplest element of thought,” is the demonstrable outcome of an

enormously prolonged course of mental evolution; and I do not know a

more melancholy instance of ingenuity misapplied than is furnished

by the arguments previously quoted from such writers, who, ignoring

all that we now know touching the history of predication, seek to

show that an act of predication is at once “the simplest element of

thought,” and so hugely elaborate a process as they endeavour to

represent. The futility of such an argument may be compared with that

of a morphologist who should be foolish enough to represent that the

Vertebrata can never have descended from the Protozoa, and maintain

his thesis by ignoring all the intermediate animals which are known

actually to exist.

 

Take an instance from among the quotations previously given. It will be

remembered that the challenge which my opponents have thrown down upon

the grounds of logic and psychology, is to produce the brute which “can

furnish the blank form of a judgment—the ‘is’ in ‘A is B.’”[260]

 

Now, I cannot indeed produce a brute that is able to supply such a

form; but I have done what is very much more to the purpose: I have

produced many nations of still existing men, in multitudes that

cannot be numbered, who are as incapable as any brute of supplying

the blank form that is required. Where is the “is,” in “Age-of-him

Father-of-thee” = “His-age-thy-father” = “Thy-father-is-old”? Or, in

still more primitive stages of human utterance, how shall we extract

the blank form of predication from a “sentence-word,” where there

is not only an absence of any copula, but also an absence of any

differentiation between the subject and the predicate? The truth, in

short, is, as now so repeatedly shown, that not only the brute, but

likewise the young child—and not only the young child, but likewise

early man—and not only early man, but likewise savage man—are all and

equally unable to furnish the blank form of predication, as this has

been slowly elaborated in the highest ramifications of the human mind.

 

Of course all this futile (because erroneous) argument on the part

of my opponents, rests upon the analysis of the proposition as this

was given in the Aristotelian system of logic—an analysis which,

in turn, depends on the grammar of the Greek language. Now, it goes

without saying that the whole of this system is obsolete, so far as any

question of the _origin_ either of thought or of speech is concerned.

I do not doubt the value of this grammatical study, nor of the logic

which is founded upon it, provided that inferences from both are kept

within their legitimate sphere. But at this time of day to regard as

primitive the mode of predication which obtained in so highly evolved a

language as the Greek, or to represent the “categories” of Aristotle’s

system as expressive of the simplest elements of human thought, appears

to me so absurd that I can only wonder how intelligent men can have

committed themselves to such a line of argument.[261]

 

Quitting, then, all these old-world fallacies which were based on an

absence of information, we must accept the analysis of predication

as this has been supplied to us by the advance of science. And this

analysis has proved to demonstration, that “the division of the

sentence into two parts, the subject and the predicate, is a mere

accident; it is not known to the polysynthetic languages of America,

which herein reflect the condition of primeval speech.... So far as

the act of thought is concerned, subject and predicate are one and the

same, and there are many languages in which they are so treated.”[262]

Consequently, it appears to me that the only position which remains for

my opponents to adopt is that of arguing in some such way as follows.

 

Freely admitting, they may say, that the issue must be thrown back

from predication as it occurs in Greek to predication as it occurs in

savage languages of low development, still we are in the presence of

predication all the same. And even when you have driven us back to the

most primitive possible form of human speech, wherein as yet there are

no parts of speech, and predication therefore requires to be conducted

in a most inefficient manner, still most obviously it _is_ conducted,

inasmuch as it is only for the purpose of conducting it that speech can

have ever come into existence at all.

 

Now, in order to meet this sole remaining position, I must begin by

reminding the reader of some of the points which have already been

established in previous chapters.

 

First of all, when seeking to define “the simplest element of thought,”

I showed that this does not occur in the fully formed proposition,

but in the fully formed concept; and that it is only out of two such

concepts as elements that full or conceptual propositions can be

formed as compounds. Or, as this was stated in the chapter on Speech,

“conceptual names are the ingredients out of which is formed the

structure of propositions; and, in order that this formation should

take place, there must be in the ingredients that element of conceptual

ideation which is already present in every denominative term.” Or, yet

again, as the same thing was there quoted from Professor Sayce, “it is

a truism of psychology that the terms of a proposition, when closely

interrogated, turn out to be nothing but abbreviated judgments.”[263]

 

Having thus defined the simplest element of thought as a concept, I

went on to show from the psychogenesis of children, that before there

is any power of forming concepts—and therefore of bestowing names as

denominative terms, or, _a fortiori_, of combining such terms in the

form of conceptual propositions—there is the power of forming recepts,

of naming these recepts by denotative terms, and even of placing such

terms in apposition for the purpose of conveying information of a

pre-conceptual kind. The pre-conceptual, rudimentary, or unthinking

propositions thus formed occur in early childhood, prior to the advent

of self-consciousness, _and prior, therefore, to the very condition

which is required for any process of conceptual thought_. Moreover, it

was shown that this pre-conceptual kind of predication is itself the

product of a gradual development. Taking its origin from the ground of

gesture-signs, when it first begins to sprout into articulate utterance

there is absolutely no distinction to be observed between “parts of

speech.” Every word is what we now know as a “sentence-word,” any

special applications of which can only be defined by gesture. Next,

these sentence-words, or others that are afterwards acquired, begin

to be imperfectly differentiated into denotative names of objects,

qualities, actions, and states; and the greater the definition which

they thus acquire as parts of speech, the more do they severally

undergo that process of connotative extension as to meaning which is

everywhere the index of a growing appreciation of analogies. Lastly,

object-words and attributive-words (_i.e._ denotative names of things

and denotative names of qualities or actions), come to be used in

apposition. But the rudimentary or unthinking form of predication

which results from this is due to merely sensuous associations and

the external “logic of events;” like the elements of which it is

composed, it is not conceptual, but pre-conceptual. With the dawn

of self-consciousness, however, predication begins to become truly

conceptual; and thus enters upon its prolonged course of still gradual

development in the region of introspective thought.

 

All these general facts, it will be remembered, were established on

grounds of psychological observation alone; I nowhere invoked the

independent witness of philology. But the time having now come for

calling in this additional testimony, the corroborating force of it

appears to me overwhelming. For it everywhere proves the growth of

predication to have been the same in the race as we have found it to be

in the individual. Therefore, as in the latter case, so in the former,

I now ask—Will any opponent venture to affirm that pre-conceptual

ideation is indicative of judgment? Or, which is the same thing, will

he venture to deny that there is an all-important distinction between

predication as receptual and predication as conceptual? Will he still

seek to take refuge in the only position now remaining, and argue, as

above supposed, that not only in the childish appositions of denotative

names, but even in the earlier and hitherto undifferentiated protoplasm

of a “sentence-word,” we have that faculty of predication on which he

founds his distinction between man and brute? Obviously, if he will not

do this, his argument is at an end, seeing that in the race, as in the

individual, there is now no longer any question as to the continuity

between the predicative germ in a sentence-word, and the fully evolved

structure of a formal proposition. On the other hand, if he does elect

to argue thus, the following brief considerations will effectually dislodge him.