Mental Evolution in Man 56

Mental Evolution in Man 56

and declared that these grammatical

structures were originally the offspring of gesture-signs. More

particularly, it has shown that in the earliest stages of articulate

utterance pronominal elements, and even predicative words, were used

in the impersonal manner which belongs to a hitherto undeveloped form

of self-consciousness—primitive man, like a young child, having

therefore spoken of his own personality in objective terminology.

It has taught us to find in the body of every conceptual term a

pre-conceptual core; so that, as the learned and thoughtful Garnett

says, “_nihil in oratione quod non prius in sensu_ may now be regarded

as an incontrovertible axiom.”[298] It has minutely described the whole

of that wonderful aftergrowth of articulate utterance through many

lines of divergent evolution, in virtue of which all nations of the

earth are now in possession, in one degree or another, of the god-like

attributes of reason and of speech. Truly, as Archdeacon Farrar says,

“to the flippant and the ignorant, how ridiculous is the apparent

inadequacy of the origin to produce such a result.”[299] But here, as

elsewhere, it is the method of evolution to bring to nought the things

that are mighty by the things that are of no reputation; and when we

feel disposed to boast ourselves in that we alone may claim the Logos,

should we not do well to pause and remember in what it was that this

our high prerogative arose? “So hat auch keine Sprache ein abstractum,

zu dem sie nicht durch Ton und Gefühl gelangt wäre.”[300] To my mind

it is simply inconceivable that any stronger proof of mental evolution

could be furnished, than is furnished in this one great fact by the

whole warp and woof of the thousand dialects of every pattern which

are now spread over the surface of the globe. We cannot speak to each

other in any tongue without declaring the pre-conceptual derivation of

our speech; we cannot so much as discuss the “origin of human faculty”

itself, without announcing, in the very medium of our discussion,

what that origin has been. It is to Language that my opponents have

appealed: by Language they are hopelessly condemned.

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER XVI.

 

THE TRANSITION IN THE RACE.

 

 

At this point I shall doubtless be expected to offer some remarks

on the probable mode of transition between the brute and the human

being. Having so fully considered both the psychology and philology of

ideation, it may be thought that I am now in a position to indicate

what I suppose to have been the actual stepping-stones whereby an

intelligent species of ape can be conceived to have crossed “the

Rubicon of Mind.” But, if I am expected to do this, I might reasonably

decline, for two reasons.

 

In the first place, the attempt, even if it could be successful, would

be superfluous. The only objection I have had to meet is one which has

been raised on grounds of psychology. This objection I have met, and

met upon its own grounds. If I have been successful, for the purposes

of argument nothing more remains to be said. If I have not been

successful, it is obviously impossible to strengthen my case by going

beyond the known facts of mind, as they actually exist before us, to

any hypothetical possibilities of mind in the dim ages of an unrecorded

past.

 

In the second place, any remarks which I have to offer upon this

subject must needs be of a wholly speculative or unverifiable

character. As well might the historian spend his time in suggesting

hypothetical histories of events known to have occurred in a

pre-historic age: his evidence that such and such events must have

occurred may be conclusive, and yet he may be quite in the dark as

to the precise conditions which led up to them, the time which was

occupied by them, and the particular method of their occurrence. In

such cases it often happens that the more certain an historian may be

that such and such an event did take place, the greater is the number

of ways in which he sees that it might have taken place. Merely for the

sake of showing that this is likewise the case in the matter now before

us, I will devote the present chapter to a consideration of three

alternative—and equally hypothetical—histories of the transition.

But, from what has just been said, I hope it will be understood that I

attach no argumentative importance to any of these hypotheses.

 

* * * * *

 

Sundry German philologists have endeavoured to show that speech

originated in wholly meaningless sounds, which in the first instance

were due to merely physiological conditions. In their opinion the

purely reflex mechanisms connected with vocalization would have

been sufficient to yield not only many differences of tone under

different states as to suffering, pleasure, effort, &c., but even the

germ of articulation in the meaningless utterance of vowel sounds

and consonants. Thus, for example, Lazarus says:—“Der Process der

eigenthümlich menschlichen Laut-Erzeugung, die Articulation der Tone,

die Hervorbringung von Vocalen und Consonanten, ist demnach auf

rein physiologischem Boden gegeben—in der urprünglichen Natur des

menschlichen physischen bewegten Organismus begründet, und wird vor

aller Willkür und Absicht also ohne Einwirkung des Geistes obwohl auf

Veranlassung von Gefühlen und Empfindungen vollzogen.”[301]

 

This, it will be observed, is the largest possible extension of

the interjectional theory of the origin of speech. It assumes that

not only inarticulate, but also articulate sounds were given forth

by the “sprachlosen Urmenschen,” in the way of instinctive cries,

wholly destitute of any semiotic intention. By repeated association,

however, they are supposed to have acquired, as it were automatically,

a semiotic value. For, to quote Professor Friedrich Müller, “Sie

sind zwar Anfangs bedeutungslos: sie können aber bedeutungsvoll

werden. Alles, was in unserem Inneren vorgeht, wird von der Seele

wahrgenommen. Sobald durch gewisse aüssere Einflüsse in Folge einer

Combination mehrerer Empfindungen eine Anschauung entsteht, nimmt die

Seele dieselbe an, Diese Anschauung hat—in Folge der durch eine der

Empfindungen hervorgebrachten Reflexbewegung in den Stimmorganen—einen

Laut zum Begleiter, welcher in gleicher Weise wie die Anschauung von

der Seele wahrgenommen wird, diese beiden Wahrnehmungen, nämlich jene

der Anschauung und jene des Lautes, _verbinden_ sich miteinander

vermöge ihrer _Gleichzeitigkeit_ im menschlichen Bewusstsein, es

findet also eine _Association_ der Laut-Anschauung mit jener der

_Sach_-Anschauung statt, die Elemente der Sach-Anschauung bekommen

an der Laute-Anschauung einen _festen_ Mittelpunkt, durch den die

_Anschauung_ zur _Vorstellung_ sich entwickelt. Wir sind damit bei

der menschlichen Sprache angelangt, welche also ihrem Wesen nach auf

der _Substituirung_ eines _Klang_-oder _Ton_bildes für das Bild einer

Anschauung beruht.”[302]

 

Now, without at all doubting the important part which originally

meaningless sounds may have played in furnishing material for vocal

sign-making, and still less disputing the agency of association in

the matter, I must nevertheless refuse to accept the above hypothesis

as anything like a full explanation of the origin of speech. For it

manifestly ignores the whole problem which stands to be solved—namely,

the genesis of those powers of ideation which first put a soul of

meaning into the previously insignificant sounds. Nearly all the

warm-blooded animals so far share with mankind the same physiological

nature as to give forth a variety of vocal sounds under as great a

variety of mental states. Therefore, if in accordance with the above

hypothesis we regard all such sounds as meaningless (or arising from

the “purely physiological basis” of reflex movement), the question

obviously presents itself, Why have not the lower animals developed

speech? According to the above doctrine, aboriginal and hitherto

speechless man started without any superiority in respect of the

sign-making faculty, and thus far precisely resembled what is taken

to be the present psychological condition of the lower animals.[303]

Why, then, out of the same original conditions has there arisen

so enormous a difference of result? If, in the case of mankind,

associations of meaningless sounds with particular states, objects,

&c., led to a substitution of the former for the latter, and thus

gave to them the significance of names, how are we to account for the

total absence of any such development in brutes? To me it appears

that this is clearly an unanswerable difficulty; and therefore I do

not wonder that the so-called interjectional theory of the origin of

speech has brought discredit on the whole philosophy of the subject.

But, as so often happens in philosophical writings, we have here a

case where an important truth is damaged by imperfect or erroneous

presentation. All the principles set forth in the above hypothesis

are sound in themselves, but the premiss from which they start is

untrue. This premiss is, that aboriginal man presented no rudiments

of the sign-making faculty—that this faculty itself required to be

originated _de novo_ by accidental associations of sounds with things.

But, as we now well know from all the facts previously given, even

the lower animals present the sign-making faculty in no mean degree

of development; and, therefore, it is perfectly certain that the

“Urmenschen,” at the time when they were “sprachlosen,” were not on

this account _zeichenlosen_. The psychological germ of communication,

which probably could not have been created by merely accidental

associations between sounds and things, must already have been given in

those psychological conditions of receptual ideation which are common

to all intelligent animals.

 

But to this all-essential germ, as thus given, I doubt not that the

soil of such associations as the interjectional theory has in view

must have been of no small importance; for this would naturally help

to nourish its semiotic nature. And the reason why the similar germ of

sign-making which occurs in the brute creation has not been similarly

nurtured, I have already considered in Chapter VIII. For, it is

needless to add, on every ground I disagree with the above quotations

where they represent articulate sounds as having been aboriginally

uttered by “Urmenschen” in the way of instinctive cries, without any

vestige of semiotic intention.[304]

 

* * * * *

 

I will now pass on to consider the two other hypotheses; and by way of

introduction to both we must remember that our materials of study on

the side of the apes is very limited. I do not mean only that no single

representative of any of the anthropoid apes has ever been made the

object of even so much observation with respect to its intelligence

as I bestowed upon a cebus. Yet this, no doubt, is an important

point, because we know that of all quadrumana—and, therefore, of all

existing animals—the anthropoid apes are the most intelligent, and,

therefore, if specially trained would probably display greater aptitude

in the matter of sign-making than is to be met with in any other kind

of brute. But I do not press this point. What I now refer to is the

fact that the existing species of anthropoid apes are very few in

number, and appear to be all on the high-road to extinction. Moreover,

it is certain that none of these existing species can have been the

progenitor of man; and, lastly, it is equally certain that the extinct

species (or genus) which did give origin to man must have differed in

several important respects from any of its existing allies. In the

first place, it must have been more social in habits; and, in the next

place, it was probably more vociferous than the orang, the gorilla,

or the chimpanzee. That there is no improbability in either of these

suppositions will be at once apparent if we remember that both are

amply sustained by analogies among existing and allied species of

the monkey tribe. Or, to state these preliminary considerations in a

converse form, when it is assumed[305] that because the few existing

and expiring species of anthropoid apes are unsocial and comparatively

silent, therefore the simian ancestors of man must have been so, it is

enough to point to the variability of both these habits among certain

allied genera of monkeys and baboons, in order at the same time to dispose of the assumption, and to indicate the probable reasons why one genus of ape gradually became evolved into _Homo_, while all the allied genera became, or are still becoming, extinct.