Mental Evolution in Man 53

Mental Evolution in Man 53

All this we have previously seen. My object in here recurring to the

matter is to show that much additional light may be thrown upon it by

the philological doctrine of “sentence-words,” which Professor Max

Müller, in common with other philologists, fully accepts.

 

Of all the writers on primitive modes of speech as represented by

existing savages, no one is entitled to speak with so much authority

as Bleek. Now, as a result of his prolonged and first-hand study of

the subject, he is strongly of opinion that aboriginal words were

expressive “not at all of an abstract or general character, but

exclusively concrete or individual.” By this he means that primitive

ideas were what I have called generic. For he says that had a word been

formed from imitation of the sound of a cuckoo, for instance, it could

not possibly have had its meaning limited to the name of that bird;

but would have been extended so as to embrace “the whole situation

so far as it came within the consciousness of the speaker.” That is

to say, it would have become a generic name for the whole recept of

bird, cry, flying, &c., &c., just as to our own children the word

_Ba_=sheep, bleating, grazing, &c. Now, this process of comprising

under one denotative term the hitherto undifferentiated perceptions of

“a whole situation so far as it comes within the consciousness of the

speaker,” is the very opposite of the process whereby a denominative

term is brought to unify, by an act of “generalization,” the previously

well-differentiated concepts between which some analogy is afterwards

discovered. Therefore the absence of any parts of speech in primitive

language is due to a generic order of ideation, whereas the unions

of parts of speech in any languages which present them is due to the

generalizing order of ideation. Or, as Bleek puts it while speaking

of the comparatively undifferentiated condition of South African

languages, “this differs entirely from the principle which prevails in

modern English, where a word, without undergoing any change of form,

may nevertheless belong to different parts of speech. For in English

the parts of speech, though not always differing in sound, are always

accurately distinguished in concept; while in the other case there

was as yet no consciousness of any difference, inasmuch as neither

form nor position had hitherto called attention to anything of the

kind. For forms had not yet made their appearance, and determinate

position [_i.e._ significance expressed by syntax], as, for example,

in Chinese, could only arise in a language of highly advanced internal

formation.”[269]

 

Indeed, if we consider the matter, it is not conceivable that the case

could be otherwise. No one will maintain that the sentence-words of

young children exhibit the highest elaborations of conceptual thought,

on the ground that they present the highest degree of “generality”

which it is possible for articulate sounds to express. But if this

is not to be suggested as regards the infant child, what possible

ground can there be for suggesting it as regards the infant man, or

for inferring that aboriginal speech must have been expressive of

“general” and “abstract” ideas, merely because the further backwards

that we trace the growth of language the less organized do we find its

structure to be? Clearly, the contradiction arises from a confusion

between ideas as generic and general, or between the extension which

is due to original vagueness and that which is laboriously acquired by

subsequent precision. An Amœba is morphologically more “generalized”

than a Vertebrate; but for this very reason it is the less highly

evolved as an organism. The philology of sentence-words, therefore,

leads us back to a state of ideation wherein as yet the powers of

conceptual thought were in that nascent condition which betokens what

I have called their pre-conceptual stage—or a stage which may be

observed in a comparatively foreshortened state among children before

the dawn of self-consciousness.

 

There can be no reasonable doubt that during this stage of mental

evolution sentence-words arose in the race as they now do in the

individual, the only difference being that then they had to be invented

instead of learnt. This difference would probably have given a larger

importance to the principle of onomatopœia,[270] and certainly a

much larger importance to the co-operation of gesture, than now

obtains in the otherwise analogous case of young children. But in

the one case as in the other, I think there can be no reasonable

question that sentence-words must have owed their origin to receptual

and pre-conceptual apprehensions of all kinds, whether of objects,

qualities, actions, states, relations, or of any two or more of these

“categories” as they may happen to have been blended in the hitherto

undifferentiating perceptions of aboriginal man.

 

* * * * *

 

I must now allude to the results of our previous inquiry touching

“the syntax of gesture-language.” For comparison will show that in

all essential particulars the semiotic construction of this the

most original and immediately graphic mode of communication, bears

a striking resemblance to that which is presented by the earliest

forms of articulate language, both as revealed by philology and in

“baby-talk.”[271] Thus, as we saw, “gesture-language has no grammar

properly so called. The same sign stands for ‘walk,’ ‘walkest,’

‘walking,’ ‘walked,’ ‘walker.’ Adjectives and verbs are not easily

distinguished by the deaf and dumb. Indeed, our elaborate system of

parts of speech is but little applicable to the gesture-language.”

Next, to quote again only one of the numerous examples previously

given to show the primitive order of apposition, whereby the language

of gesture serves to convey a predication, “I should be punished if

I were lazy and naughty” would be put, “I lazy, naughty, no!—lazy,

naughty, I punished; yes!” Again, “to make is too abstract for the

deaf-mute; to show that the tailor makes the coat, or that the

carpenter makes the table, he would represent the tailor sewing the

coat and the carpenter sawing and planing the table. Such a proposition

as ‘Rain makes the land fruitful’ would not come into his way of

thinking: ‘Rain, fall; plants, grow,’ would be his pictorial (_i.e._

receptual) __EXPRESSION__.” Elsewhere this writer remarks that the absence

of any distinction between substantive, adjective, and verb, which

is universal in gesture-language, is customary in Chinese, and not

unknown even in English. “To _butter_ bread, to _cudgel_ a man, to

_oil_ machinery, to _pepper_ a dish, and scores of such __EXPRESSION__s,

involve action and instrument in one word, and that word a substantive

treated as the root or crude form of a verb. Such __EXPRESSION__s are

concretisms, picture-words, gesture-words, as much as the deaf-and-dumb

man’s one sign for ‘butter’ and ‘buttering.’” And similarly as to the

substantive-adjective, in such words as _iron-stone_, _feather-grass_,

_chesnut-horse_, &c.; here the mere apposition of the words

constitutes the one an attribution of the other, as is the case in

gesture-language. And not only in Chinese, but as shown in the last

chapter, in a great number and variety of savage tongues this mode of

construction is habitual. In all these cases distinctions between parts

of speech can be rendered only by syntax; and this syntax is the syntax

of gesture.

 

I will ask the reader to refer to the whole passage in which

I previously treated of the syntax of gesture,[272] giving

special attention to the points just noted, and also to the

following:—invariable absence of the copula, and frequent absence

of the verb (as “Apple-father-I” = “My father gave me an apple”);

resemblance of sentences to the polysynthetic or unanalyzing type (as

“I-Tom-struck-a-stick” = “Tom struck me with a stick”); the device

whereby syntax, or order of apposition, is made to distinguish between

predicative, attributive, and possessive meanings, and therefore

also between substantives and adjectives; the importance of grimace

in association with gesture (as when a look of inquiry converts an

assertion into a question); the highly instructive means whereby

relational words, and especially pronouns, are rendered in the gestures

of pointing; the no less instructive manner whereby a general idea is

rendered in a summation of particular ideas (as “Did you have soup? did

you have porridge?” &c. = “What did you have for dinner?”); and the

receptual or sensuous source of all gesture-signs which are concerned

in expressing ideas presenting any degree of abstraction (as striking

the hand to signify “hard,” &c.).

 

Hence, we may everywhere trace a fundamental similarity between the

comparatively undeveloped form of conceptual thought as displayed

in gesture, and that which philology has revealed as distinctive of

early speech. Of course in both cases conceptual thought is there:

the ideation is human, though, comparatively speaking, immature.

But the important point to notice is the curiously close similarity

between the forms of language-structure as revealed in gesture and in

early speech. For no one, I should suppose, can avoid perceiving the

idiographic character of gesture-language, whereby it is more nearly

allied to the purely receptual modes of communication which we have

studied in the lower animals, than is the case with our fully evolved

forms of predication. It therefore seems to me highly suggestive that

the earliest forms and records of spoken language that we possess

(notwithstanding that they are still far from aboriginal), follow so

closely the model which is still supplied to us in the idiographic

gestures of deaf-mutes. Such syntax as there is—_i.e._ such _a putting

in order_ as is expressive of the mode of ideational grouping—so

nearly resembles the syntax of gesture-language, that we can at once

perceive their common psychological source. It is on account of this

structural resemblance between gesture and early speech that I have

devoted so much space to our consideration of the former; and if I do

not now dwell at greater length upon the significance of the analogy,

it is only because this significance appears too obvious to require

further treatment.

 

There is, however, one point with reference to this analogy on which

a few words must here be said. If there is any truth at all in the

theory of evolution with reference to the human mind, we may be quite

sure, from what has been said in earlier chapters, that tone, gesture,

and grimace preceded articulation as the medium of pre-conceptual

utterance. Therefore, the structural similarity between existing

gesture-language and the earliest records of articulate language now

under consideration, is presumably due, not only to a similarity of

psychological conditions, but also to direct continuity of descent.

Or, as Colonel Mallery well puts it, while speaking of the presumable

origin of spoken language, “as the action was then the essential, and

the consequent or concomitant sound the accident, it would be expected

that a representation, or feigned reproduction of the action, would

have been used to express the idea before the sound associated with

that action could have been separated from it. The visual onomatopœia

of gestures, which even yet have been subjected to but slight

artificial corruption, would therefore serve as a key to the audible.

It is also contended that in the pristine days, when the sounds of

the only words yet formed had close connection with objects and the ideas directly derived from them, signs were as much more copious for communication than speech as the sight embraces more and more distinct characteristics of objects than does the sense of hearing.”