Mental Evolution in Man 59

Mental Evolution in Man 59

It is now time to consider a branch of this hypothesis which has been

suggested by the philologist Professor Noiré, to which allusion has

already been made in an earlier chapter.[326]

 

Before Mr. Darwin had published his views, Professor Noiré had

elaborated a theory of the origin of speech which was substantially

the same as that which I have already quoted from the _Descent of

Man_.[327] The only difference between the two was that, while Darwin

referred the origin of articulate speech from instinctive cries, &c.,

to the anthropoid apes, Noiré referred it to a being already human.

In other words, Noiré adopted what I have here called the third

hypothesis, which assumes a speechless form of man as anterior to the

existing form.[328] But, as a result of further deliberation, Noiré

came to the conclusion that “the objects of fear and trembling and

dismay are even now the least appropriate to enter into the pure,

clear, and tranquil sphere of speech-thought, or to supply the first

germs of it.” Accordingly, he discarded the view that these germs

were to be sought in instinctive cries and danger calls, in favour

of the hypothesis that articulation had its origin in sounds which

are made by bodies of men when engaged in common occupations. Having

already explained the elements of this Yo-he-ho theory, it will here

be enough to repeat that I think there is probably some measure of

truth in it; although I likewise think it self-evident that this cannot

have been the only source of aboriginal speech. In what proportion

this branch of onomatopœia was concerned in the genesis of aboriginal

words—supposing it to have been concerned at all—we have now no means

of even conjecturing. But seeing that there are so many other sources

of onomatopœia supplied by Nature, and that these other sources are

so apparent in all existing languages, while the one suggested by

Noiré has not left a record of its occurrence in any language,—seeing

these things, I conclude, as before stated, that at best the Yo-he-ho

principle can be accredited with but a small proportional part in the

aboriginal genesis of language.[329] Therefore, with respect to this

hypothesis I have only three remarks to make: (1) that it is plainly

but a special branch of the general onomatopoetic theory; (2) that,

as such, it not improbably presents some measure of truth; and (3)

that, consequently, it ought to be regarded—not as it is regarded

by its author Noiré and its advocate Max Müller, namely, as the sole

explanation of the origin of speech, but—as representing only one

among many other ways in which, during many ages, many communities of

vociferous though hitherto speechless men may have slowly evolved the

art of making articulate signs.

 

* * * * *

 

Probably it will be objected to this third hypothesis, in all its

branches, that it amounts to a _petetio principii_: _Homo alalus_,

it may be said, is _Homo postulatus_. To this I answer, Not so. The

question raised has been raised expressly and exclusively on the

faculty of conceptual speech, and it is conceded that of this faculty

there can have been no earlier phase than that of articulation.

Consequently, if my opponents assume that prior to the appearance of

this earliest phase it is impossible that any hitherto speechless

animal should have been erect in attitude, intelligent enough to chip

flints, or greatly in advance of other animals in the matter of making

indicative gesture-signs, assisted by vocal tones,—if my opponents

assume all this, it is _they_ who are endeavouring to beg the question.

For they are merely assuming, in the most arbitrary way, that the

faculty of conceptual thought is necessary in order that an animal

already semi-erect, should become more erect; in order that an animal

already intelligent enough to use stones for cracking nuts and opening

oysters, should not only (as at present) choose the most appropriate

stones for the purpose, but begin to fashion them for these or other

purposes; in order that an animal already more apt than any other

in the use of gesture and vocal signs, should advance considerably

along the same line of psychical improvement.[330] The hypothesis

that such a considerable advance might have gradually taken place,

up to the psychological level supposed, may or may not be true; but,

at least, it does not beg the question. The question is whether the

distinctively human faculty of conceptual ideation differs in kind or

in degree from the lower faculty of receptual ideation; and my present

suggestion amounts to nothing more than a supposition that receptual

ideation may have been developed in the animal kingdom to some such

level as it reaches in a child who is late in beginning to speak.[331]

If any opponent should object to this suggestion on the score of its

appearing to beg the question, he must remember that this question

only arises—in accordance with his own argument—at the place where

the faculty of sign-making ministers to that of introspective thought.

The question as to how far the lower faculties of mind admit of being

developed apart from (or, as I believe, antecedent to) the occurrence

of introspective thought, is obviously quite a distinct question. And

it is a question that can only be answered by observation. Now, I

have already shown that in the case of intelligent animals—and still

more in that of a growing child—the faculties of receptual ideation

do admit of being wrought up to an astonishing degree of adaptive

efficiency, without the possibility of their having been in any way

indebted to the distinctively human faculty of conceptual thought.

 

* * * * *

 

On the whole, then, it seems to me probable, on grounds of psychology

alone, that the developmental history of intelligence in our race

so far resembled this history in the growing child that, prior to

the advent of speech, receptual ideation had attained a much higher

level of perfection than it now presents in any animal—so much

so, indeed, that the adult creature presenting it might well have

merited the name of _Homo alalus_. And, as we shall see in my next

volume, this inference on psychological grounds is corroborated by

certain inferences which may reasonably be drawn from some other

classes of facts. But in now for the present taking leave of this

question, I desire again to repeat, that it has nothing to do with

my main argument. For it makes no essential difference to my case

whether the faculty of speech was early or late in making its first

appearance. Under either alternative, so soon as the denotative

stage of articulation had been reached by our progenitors in the way

already sketched on its psychological side, the next stage would

have consisted in an extension of denotative signs into connotative

signs. As we have now seen, by a large accumulation of evidence, this

extension of denotative into connotative signs is rendered inevitable

through the principle of sensuous association. In other words, I have

adduced what can only be deemed a superabundance of facts to prove

that, in the first-talking child and even in the parrot, originally

denotative names of particular objects are spontaneously extended

to other objects sensuously perceived to be like in kind. And no

less superabundantly have I proved that this process of connotative

extension is antecedent to the rise of conceptual thought, and,

therefore, to that of true denomination. The limits to which such

purely receptual connotation may extend, I have shown to be determined

by the degree of development which has been reached by the faculties of

purely receptual apprehension. In the parrot this degree of development

is but low; in the dog and monkey considerably higher (though,

unfortunately, these animals are not able to give any articulate

__EXPRESSION__ to their receptual apprehensions); in the child of two years

it is higher still. But, as before shown, no antagonist can afford

to allege that in any of these cases there is a difference of kind

between the mental faculties that are respectively involved; because

his argument on psychological grounds can only stand upon the basis of

conceptual cognition, which, in turn, can only stand upon the basis of

self-consciousness; and this is demonstrably absent in the child until

long after the time when denotative names are connotatively extended by

the receptual intelligence of the child itself.

 

Thus, there can be no reasonable question that it is psychologically

possible for _Homo sapiens_ to have had an ancestry, which—whether

already partly human or still simian—was able to carry denotation

to a high level of connotation, without the need of cognition

belonging to the order conceptual. Whether the signs were then made

by tone and gesture alone, or likewise by articulate sounds, is also,

psychologically considered, immaterial. In either case connotation

would have followed denotation up to whatever point the higher

receptual (“pre-conceptual”) intelligence of such an ancestry was

able to take cognizance of simple analogies. And this psychological

possibility becomes on other grounds a probability of the highest

order, so soon as we know of any independent evidence touching the

corporeal evolution of man from a simian ancestry.

 

Now, we have already seen that pre-conceptual connotation amounts to

what I have termed pre-conceptual judgment. The qualities or relations

thus connotated are not indeed contemplated _as_ qualities or _as_

relations; but in the mere act of such a connotative classification

the higher receptual intelligence is virtually judging a resemblance,

and virtually predicating its judgment. Therefore I think it probable

that the earliest forms of such virtual predication were those which

would have been conveyed in single words. And, as we have seen in the

foregoing chapters, there is abundant and wholly independent evidence

to show, that this form of nascent predication continued to hold an

important place until so late in the intellectual history of our race

as to leave a permanent record of its occurrence in the structure of

all languages now extant.

 

The epoch during which these sentence-words prevailed was probably

immense; and, as we have before seen, far from having been inimical

to gesticulation, must have greatly encouraged it—raising, in

fact, the indicative phase of language to the level of elaborate

pantomime. Out of the complex of sentence-words and gesture-signs thus

inaugurated, grammatical forms became slowly evolved, as we know from

the independent witness of philology. But long before grammatical forms

of any sort began to be evolved, a kind of uncertain differentiation

must have taken place in this protoplasmic material of speech, in such

wise that some sentence-words would have tended to become specially

denotative of particular objects, others of particular actions, states,

qualities, and relations. This “primitive streak,” as it were, of

what was afterwards to constitute the vertebral column of articulated

language in the independent yet mutually related “parts of speech,”

must in large measure have owed its development to gesture. Now, by

this time, gesture itself must already have acquired an elementary kind

of syntax, such as belongs even to semiotic movements of an infant who

happens to be late in beginning to speak.[332] This elementary kind

of syntax would necessarily be taken over by, or impressed upon, the

growing structure of speech, at all events so far as the principles

and the order of apposition were concerned. Moreover, this sign-making

value of apposition would at the same time have been promoted

within the sphere of articulate signs themselves. For, as we have

previously seen, as soon as words become in any measure denotative,

they immediately begin to undergo a connotative extension;[333] and

with this progressive widening of signification, words require to be

more and more frequently used in apposition. Quite independently of

any as yet non-existing powers of introspective thought, the external

“logic of events” must have constantly determined such apposition

of receptually connotative terms, as we have already so fully seen

in the case of the growing child. Thus the conditions were laid for

the tripartite division—the genitive case, the adjective, and the

verb. Not till long subsequent ages, however, would this division

have taken place in its fulness. During the time which we are now

contemplating, there could have been no distinction at all between the

genitive case and the adjective; neither could there have been any

verbs as independent parts of speech. Nevertheless, already some of the

denotative signs would have been used as names of particular objects,

others of particular qualities, and yet others of particular actions,

states, and relations. Not yet deserving to be regarded as fully

differentiated parts of speech, these object-words, quality-words,

&c., would have resembled those with which we are all well acquainted

in nursery language, and which still survive, in a remarkably large

measure, among many dialects of a low order of development. Now, as

soon as these denotative names became at all fixed in meaning within the limits of the same community, those which respectively signified objects, qualities, actions, states, and relations, must necessarily have been often used in apposition; and, as often as they were thus used, would have constituted nascent or pre-conceptual propositions.