Mental Evolution in Man 54

Mental Evolution in Man 54

All the foregoing and general conclusions thus reached, touching the

genesis of conceptual from pre-conceptual ideation, admit of being

strikingly corroborated through another line of philological research.

On antecedent grounds the evolutionist would suppose that “the first

language-signs must have denoted those physical acts and qualities

which were directly apprehensible by the senses; both because these

alone are directly significable, and because it was only they that

untrained human beings had the power to deal with or the occasion to

use.”[274] In other words, if, as we suppose, language had its origin

in merely denotative sign-making, which gradually became more and more

connotative and thus gradually more and more predicative; obviously the

original denotations must have referred only to objects (or actions,

states, and qualities) of merely receptual significance—_i.e._

“those physical acts and qualities which are directly apprehensible

by the senses.” And, no less obviously, the connotative extension

of such denotative names must, for an enormously long period, have

been confined to a pre-conceptual cognizance of the most obvious

analogies—_i.e._ such analogies as would necessarily thrust themselves

upon the merely sensuous perception by the force of direct association.

 

Now, if this were the case, what would the evolutionist expect to find

in language as it now exists? Clearly, he would expect to find more

or less well-marked traces, in the fundamental constitution of all

languages, of what has been called “fundamental metaphor”—by which

is meant an intellectual extension of terms that originally were of

no more than sensuous signification. And this is precisely what we do

find. “The whole history of language, down to our own day, is full

of examples of the reduction of physical terms and phrases to the

__EXPRESSION__ of non-physical conceptions and relations; we can hardly

write a line without giving illustrations of this kind of linguistic

growth. 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.”[275]

 

Now, I hold that this receptual nucleus of all our conceptual terms

furnishes the strongest possible evidence, not only of the historical

priority of the former, but also of what Professor Max Müller

calls their “dire necessity” to the growth of the latter.[276] In

other words, the facts appear conclusively to show that conceptual

connotation (denomination) has always had—_and can only have had_—a

receptual core (denotation) around which to develop. 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_.

 

How this large and general fact is to be met by my antagonists I know

not. It certainly does not satisfy the case to say, with Professor Max

Müller,[277] Noiré,[278] and those who think with them, that in no

other way could the growth of conceptual thought have been possible;

for this is merely to reiterate on _a priori_ grounds the conclusion

which I have reached _a posteriori_. And the more that this historical

priority of denotation can thus be shown an _a priori_ necessity to the

subsequent genesis of denomination, the greater becomes the cogency

of our evidence _a posteriori_ that, as a matter of fact, such has

been invariably the order of historical succession. For, if conceptual

ideation differs from receptual in kind, why this necessity for the

historical priority of the latter? Why should denotation thus always

require to precede denomination—or receptual connotation thus always

require to precede conceptual predication—unless it be that the one

is a further and a continuous development of the other? Surely as well

might the botanist institute a specific distinction between the root

and the flower of the self-same plant, as the psychologist, with these

results of philological research before him, still persist in drawing

a distinction of kind between the receptual denotation of “radical

elements,” and the full efflorescence of conceptual thought.

 

A single illustration may serve to convey the force of this argument

more fully than any abstract discussion of it. But I will introduce the

illustration with an analogous case. The following well-established

fact I quote from Geiger:—

 

“Man had language before he had tools.... On considering a word

denoting an activity carried on with a tool, we shall invariably

find that this was not its original meaning, but that it previously

implied a similar activity requiring only the natural organs....

This fact of the activity with implements deriving its name from

one more simple, ancient, and brute-like, is quite universal, and

I do not know how otherwise to account for it but that the name is

older than the activity with tools which it denotes at the present

time—that, in fact, the word was already extant before men used any

other organs but the native and natural ones.... The vestiges of his

earliest conceptions still preserved in language proclaim it loudly and

distinctly that man has developed from a state in which he had solely

to rely on the aid of his organs—a state, therefore, in which he

differed little in his habits from the brute creation, and with respect

to the enjoyment of his existence, nay, to his preservation, depended

almost entirely on whatever lucky chance presented to him.”[279]

 

Now, to this special illustration on the general principle of

“fundamental metaphor” it will doubtless be said—Very interesting in

itself; but, after all, it merely amounts to a philological proof that

tools are younger than words; that men did not always possess tools;

that tools were gradually invented; and that, when invented, they were

named by a metaphorical application of words previously in use.—Well,

if we are all agreed so far, I will proceed to adduce my illustration.

 

Judging from the now extensive literature which is opposed to

evolutionary teaching in the case of man, I gather that the great

majority of writers are quite as much impressed by the moral and

religious aspects of human psychology as they are by the intellectual.

Now, as already stated in the Preface, I reserve for a future volume

a full consideration of these distinctively human faculties. In the

present part of my work I am concerned exclusively with the question

as to the origin of those powers of conceptual thought which, under

any point of view, must be regarded as the necessary and antecedent

condition to the possibility both of conscience and religion.

Nevertheless, merely for the sake of supplying an illustration touching

the point now before us, I may here forestall a little of what I shall

hereafter have to present in detail touching the evidence that we have

of the genesis of conscience. And this I will do by another quotation

from the same philologist, seeing that he is an authority whom none of

my opponents can afford to ignore.

 

“If we examine the words, those oldest pre-historic testimonies,

we shall find that all moral notions contain something morally

indifferent.” That is to say, they all contain what I have termed

a “receptual core,” expressive of some simple physical process,

or condition, the name of which has been afterwards transferred,

by “fundamental metaphor,” to the moral “concept.” Omitting the

illustrations, the passage continues as follows:—“But why have not

the morally good and bad their own names in language? Why do we know

them from something else that previously had its appellation? Evidently

because language dates from a period when a moral judgment, a knowledge

of good and evil, had not yet dawned in the human mind.”[280]

 

Now, at present I am not concerned with this conclusion, further than

to remark that I do not see how it is to be obviated, if our previous

agreement is to stand with regard to the precisely analogous case

of the names of tools. That is to say, if any one allows that the

philological evidence is sufficient to prove the priority of words

to the tools which they designate, consistency must constrain him

also to allow that the fundamental concepts of morality are of later

origin than the names by which they have been baptized, and in virtue

of which they must be regarded as having become concepts at all.

These names—just like the names of tools—were all originally of

nothing more than pre-conceptual significance, serving to denote such

obvious physical states or activities as were immediately cognizable

by the powers of sensuous perception and direct association. Then,

as the moral sense began to dawn, and the utilitarian significance

of conduct as ethical began to be appreciated, the principles of

“fundamental metaphor” were applied to the naming of these newly found

concepts—presumably at about the same time as these same principles

were applied to the naming of newly found tools.

 

Now, this is only one illustration out of a practically infinite number

of others which it would be easy to quote—seeing, indeed, as Whitney

observes, that “we can hardly write a line without giving illustrations

of this kind of linguistic growth.” And whatever may be thought (at

this premature stage of our inquiry) concerning the application of

the general principle before us to the special case of conscience,

it appears to me there can be no question at all that this general

principle of “fundamental metaphor” reveals the fact of an intellectual

growth from what I have called the pre-conceptual to the conceptual

phase; and, moreover, that it proves such a growth to have been the

universal characteristic of human faculty in those pre-historic times

of which language preserves to us the only record.[281]

 

* * * * *

 

There still remains one other department of philological inquiry to

be considered, and its consideration will tend yet further and most

forcibly to corroborate all the general conclusions already attained.

Hitherto we have been engaged for the most part on what I have already

called the palæontology of human thought as revealed, fossil-like, in

the linguistic petrifactions of pre-historic man. But the science of

comparative philology is not confined in its researches upon early

forms of speech to the bygone remnants of a distant age. On the

contrary, just like the science of comparative anatomy, it is furnished

with still existing materials for study, which are of the nature of

living organisms, and which present so many grades of evolution that

the lowest members of the series bring us within easy distance of

those aboriginal forms which can only be studied in the fossil state.

Hitherto I have considered these lowest existing languages only with

reference to their forms of predication. Here I desire to consider them

with reference to the quality of ideation that they betoken.

 

In the next instalment of my work I shall have to treat of the

psychology of savages, and then it will become apparent that there

is no very precise relation to be constantly traced between grades

of mental evolution in general, and of language-development in

particular. Nevertheless there is a general relation: and therefore

it is among the lowest savages that we meet with the lowest types

of language-structure.[282] In the present connection I shall have

to treat of these languages only in so far as they throw light upon

the quality of ideation with which they are concerned, or so far as

they are related to the general principles with which we have already

been occupied. And, even as thus limited, I will endeavour to make my

exposition as brief as possible.

 

I will begin by supplying a few quotations from the more competent

authorities who have written upon the subject from a linguistic point

of view.

 

“It requires but the feeblest power of abstraction—a power even

possessed by idiots—to use a name as the sign of a conception,

_e.g._ to say ‘sun’;[283]—to say ‘sheen,’ as the description of a

phenomenon common to all shining objects, is a higher effort, and to

say ‘to shine’ as expressive of the state or act is higher still. Now,

familiar as such efforts may be to us, there is ample proof that they

could not have been so to the inventors of language, because they are

not so, even now, to some nations of mankind after all their long

millenniums of existence. Instances of this fact have been repeatedly

adduced.”[284] Thus, for example, the Society Islanders have separate

words for dog’s-tail, bird’s-tail, sheep’s-tail, &c., but no word for

tail itself—_i.e._ tail in general.[285] The Mohicans have words to

signify different kinds of cutting, but no verb “to cut;” and forms

for “I love him,” “I love you,” &c., but no verb “to love;” while the

Choctanis have names for different species of oak, but no word for the

genus oak.[286] Again, the Australians have no word for tree, or even

for bird, fish, &c.;[287] and the Eskimo, although he has verbs which

signify to fish-seal, to fish-whale, &c., has not any verb “to fish.”

“Ces langues,” Du Ponceau remarks, “généralisent rarement;” and he

shows that they have not even any verb to imply “I will,” or “I wish,”

although they have separate verbal forms for “I wish to eat meat,”

“I wish to eat soup;” neither have they any general noun-substantive

which means “a blow,” although they have a variety which severally mean

blows with as many different kinds of instruments.[288] Similarly, Mr.

Crawford tells us, “the Malay is very deficient in abstract words; and

the usual train of ideas of the people who speak it does not lead them

to make a frequent use even of the few they possess. With this poverty

of the abstract is united a redundancy of the concrete,”—and he gives

many instances of the same kind as those above rendered from other

languages.[289] So, likewise, we are told, “the dialect of the Zulus is

rich in nouns denoting different objects of the same genus, according

to some variety of colour, or deficiency of members, or some other peculiarity,” such as “white-cow,” “red-cow,” “brown-cow;”[290] and the Sechuâna has no fewer than ten words all meaning “horned cattle.”