Mental Evolution in Man 52

Mental Evolution in Man 52

We are now in a position to consider the exact psychological relation

of sentence-words to denotative and receptually connotative words. It

will be remembered that I have everywhere spoken of sentence-words as

representing an even more primitive order of ideation than denotative

words, and, _a fortiori_, than receptually connotative words. On the

other hand, in earlier parts of this treatise I showed that both the

last-mentioned kinds of words occur in children when they first begin

to speak, and may even be traced so low down in the psychological scale

as the talking birds. This apparent ambiguity, therefore, now requires

to be cleared up. Can anything, it may be reasonably asked, in the

shape of spoken language be more primitive than the very first words

which are spoken by a child, or even by a parrot? But, if not, how can

I agree with those philologists who conclude that there is an even

still more primitive stage of conceptual evolution to be recognized in

sentence-words?

 

Briefly, my answer to these questions is that in the young child

and the talking bird denotative-words, connotative-words, and

sentence-words are all equally primitive; or, if there is any priority

to be assigned, that it must be assigned to the first-named. But the

reason of this, I hold to be, is, that the child and the bird are

both living in an already-developed medium of spoken language, and,

therefore, as recently stated, have only to learn their denotative

names by special association, while primitive man had himself to

fashion his names out of the previously inarticulate materials of his

own psychology. Now this, as we have also seen, he only could do by

such associations of sounds and gestures as in the first instance

must have conveyed meanings of a pre-conceptually predicative kind.

In the absence of any sounds already given—and therefore already

_agreed upon_—as denotative names, there could be no possibility of

primitive man arbitrarily _assigning_ such names; and thus there could

have been no parallel to a young child who receptually _acquires_

them. In order that he should assign names, primitive man must first

have had occasion to make his pre-conceptual statements about the

objects, qualities, &c., the names of which afterwards grew out of

these statements, or sentence-words. Adam, indeed, gave names to

animals; but Adam was already in possession of conceptual thought, and

therefore in a psychological position to appreciate the importance of

what he was about. But the “pre-Adamite man” who is now before us could

not possibly have invented names for their own sakes, unless he were

already capable of thinking about names _as_ names, and, therefore,

already in possession of that very conceptual thought which, as we

have now so often seen, depends upon names for its origin. Even with

all our own fully developed powers of conceptual thought, we cannot

_name_ an object when in the society of men with whose language we

are totally unacquainted, without _predicating_ something about that

object by means of gestures or other signs. Therefore, without further

discussion, it must be obvious—not only, as already shown, that there

is here no exact parallel between ontogenesis and phylogenesis, and

that we have thus a full explanation why sentence-words were of so much

more importance to the infant man than they are to the infant child,

but further and consequently—that the question whether sentence-words

are more primitive than denotative words is not a question that

is properly stated, unless it be also stated whether the question

applies to the individual or to the race. As regards the individual

of to-day, it cannot be said that there is any priority, historical

or psychological, of sentence-words over denotative words, or even

over receptually connotative words of a low order of extension. Nay,

we have seen that the leading principles of grammatical form admit of

being acquired by the child together with his acquisition of words of

all kinds, and that even talking birds are able to distinguish between

names as severally names of objects, qualities, states, or actions.

 

Thus we find that to almost any order of intelligence which is already

surrounded by the medium of spoken language, the understanding—and, in

the presence of any power of imitative utterance, the acquisition—of

denotative names as signs or marks of corresponding objects, qualities,

&c., is, if anything, a more primitive act than that of using a

sentence-word; but that in the absence of such an already-existing

medium, sentence-words are more primitive than denotative names.

Nevertheless, it is of importance to note how low an order of

receptual ideation is capable of learning a denotative name by special

association, because this fact proves that as soon as mankind advanced

to the stage where they first began to coin their sentence-words, they

must already have been far above the psychological level required

for the acquisition of denotative words, _if only such words had

previously been in existence_. Consequently, we can well understand

how such words would soon have begun to come into existence through

the habitual employment of sentence-words in relation to particular

objects, qualities, states, actions, &c.; by such special associations,

sentence-words would readily degenerate into merely semiotic marks.

How long or how short a time this genesis of relatively “empty words”

out of the primordially “full words” may have occupied, it is now

impossible to say; but the important thing for us to notice is, that

during the whole of this time—whatever it may have been—the mind of

primitive man was already far above the psychological level which is

required for the apprehension of a denotative name.[264]

 

So much, then, for the first class of considerations which has been

opened up by throwing upon the results of our psychological analysis

the independent light of philological research. I will now pass on to a

second class, which is even of more importance.

 

From the fact that sentence-words played so all-important a part in the

origin of speech, and that in order to do so they essentially depended

on the co-operation of gestures with which they were accompanied, so

that in the resulting “complex of sound and gesture the sound had

no meaning apart from the gesture;” from these now well-established

facts, we may gain some additional light on a question previously

considered—namely, the extent to which primitive words were “abstract”

or “concrete,” “particular” or “general,” and, therefore, “receptual”

or “conceptual.” According to Professor Max Müller, “the science of

language has proved by irrefragable evidence that human thought, in the

true sense of that word—that is, human language—did not proceed from

the concrete to the abstract, but from the abstract to the concrete.

Roots, the elements out of which all language has been constructed,

are abstract, never concrete; and it is by predicating these abstract

concepts of this or that, by localizing them here or there, in fact by

applying the category of οὐϚία or substance, to the roots, that the

first foundation of our language and our thought were laid.”[265]

 

Here, to begin with, there is an inherent contradiction. When it is

said that the roots in question already presented abstract concepts, it

becomes a contradiction to add that “the first foundations of language

and thought were laid by applying the category of substance to the

roots.” For, if these roots already presented abstract concepts, they

already presented the distinctive feature of human “thought,” whose

“foundations,” therefore, must have been “laid” somewhere further back

in the history of mankind. But, besides this inherent contradiction, we

have here an emphatic re-statement of the two radical errors which I

previously mentioned, and which everywhere mar the philosophical value

of Professor Max Müller’s work. The first is his tacit assumption that

the roots of Aryan speech represent the original elements of articulate

language. The second is that, upon the basis of this assumption, the

science of language has proved, by irrefragable evidence, that human

thought proceeded from the abstract to the concrete—or, in other

words, that it sprang into being Minerva-like, already equipped with

the divine inheritance of conceptual wisdom. Now, in entertaining this

theory, Professor Max Müller is not only in direct conflict with all

his philological brethren, but likewise, as we have previously seen,

often compelled to be irreconcilably inconsistent with himself.[266]

Moreover, as we have likewise seen, his assumption as to the aboriginal

nature of Aryan roots, on which his transcendental doctrine rests, is

intrinsically absurd, and thus does not really require the united voice

of professed philologists for its condemnation. Therefore, what the

science of language _does_ prove “by irrefragable evidence” is, _not_

that these roots of the Aryan branch of language are the aboriginal

elements of human speech, or indices of the aboriginal condition of

human ideation; but that, being the survivals of incalculably more

primitive and immeasurably more remote phases of word-formation,

they come before us as the already-matured products of conceptual

thought—and, _a fortiori_, that on the basis of these roots alone _the

science of language has absolutely no evidence at all to furnish_ as

touching the matter which Professor Max Müller here alludes to in such

positive terms. In this connection there can be no possible escape from

the tersely expressed conclusion previously quoted from Geiger, and

unanimously entertained as an axiom by philologists in general:—“These

roots are not the primitive roots: we have perhaps in no one single

instance the first aboriginal articulate sound—just as little, of

course, the aboriginal signification.”[267]

 

But the point which I now wish to bring forward is this. We have

previously seen the source of these unfortunate utterances in Professor

Max Müller’s philology appears to reside in certain prepossessions

which he exhibits in the domain of psychology. For he adopts the

assumption that there can be no order of words which do not, by the

mere fact of their existence, imply concepts: he does not sufficiently

recognize that there may be a power of bestowing names as signs,

without the power of thinking these signs as names. Consequently, the

distinction which, on grounds of comparative psychology, appears to me

so obvious and so necessary—_i.e._ between names as merely denotative

marks due to pre-conceptual association, and denominative judgments due

to conceptual thought—has escaped his sufficient notice. Consequently,

also, he has failed to distinguish between ideas as “general” and what

I have called “generic;” or between an idea that is general because

it is born of an intentional synthesis of the results of a previous

analysis, and an idea that is _generalized_[268] because not yet

differentiated by any intentional analysis, and therefore representing

simply an absence of conceptual thought. My child on first beginning

to speak had a generalized idea of similarity between all kinds of

brightly shining objects, and therefore called them all by the one

denotative name of “star.” The astronomer has a general idea answering

to his denominative name of “star;” but this has been arrived at after

a prolonged course of mental evolution, wherein conceptual analysis

has been engaged in conceptual classification in many and various

directions: it therefore represents the psychological antithesis of the

generalized idea, which was due to the merely sensuous associations

of pre-conceptual thought. Ideas, then, as general and as generic severally occupy the very antipodes of Mind.