Mental Evolution in Man 67

Mental Evolution in Man 67

My own theory of the matter, however, is slightly different to this.

For, while accepting all that goes to constitute the substance of Mr.

Darwin’s suggestion, I think it is almost certain that the faculty of

articulate sign-making was a product of much later evolution, so that

the creature who first presented this faculty must have already been

more human than “ape-like.” This _Homo alalus_ stands before the mind’s

eye as an almost brutal object, indeed; yet still, erect in attitude,

shaping flints to serve as tools and weapons, living in tribes or

societies, and able in no small degree to communicate the logic of his

recepts by means of gesture-signs, facial __EXPRESSION__s, and vocal tones.

From such an origin, the subsequent evolution of sign-making faculty in

the direction of articulate sounds would be an even more easy matter to

imagine than it was under the previous hypothesis. Having traced the

probable course of this evolution, as inferred by the aid of sundry

analogies; and having dwelt upon the remarkable significance in this

connection of the inarticulate sounds which still survive as so-called

“clicks” in the lowly-formed languages of Africa; I went on to detail

sundry considerations which seemed to render probable the prolonged

existence of the imaginary being in question—traced the presumable

phases of his subsequent evolution, and met the objection which might

be raised on the score of _Homo alalus_ being _Homo postulatus_.

 

In conclusion, however, I pointed out that whatever might be the truth

as touching the time when the faculty of articulation arose, the

course of mental evolution, after it did arise, must have been the

same. Without again repeating the sketch which I gave of what this

course must have been, it will be enough to say, in the most general

terms, that I believe it began with sentence-words in association with

gesture-signs; that these acted and reacted on one another to the

higher elaboration of both; that denotative names, for the most part

of onomatopoetic origin, rapidly underwent connotative extensions;

that from being often and necessarily used in apposition, nascent

predications arose; that these gave origin, in later times, to the

grammatical distinctions between adjectives and genitive cases on

the one hand, and predicative words on the other; that likewise

gesture-signs were largely concerned in the origin of other grammatical

forms, especially of pronominal elements, many of which afterwards went

to constitute the material out of which the forms of declension and

conjugation were developed; but that although pronouns were thus among

the earliest words which were differentiated by mankind as separate

parts of speech, it was not until late in the day that any pronouns

were used especially indicative of the first person. The significance

of this latter fact was shown to be highly important. We have already

seen that the whole distinction between man and brute resides in

the presence or absence of conceptual thought, which, in turn, is

but an __EXPRESSION__ of the presence or absence of self-consciousness.

Consequently, the whole of this treatise has been concerned with the

question whether we have here to do with a distinction of kind or of

degree—of origin or of development. In the case of the individual,

there can be no doubt that it is a distinction of degree, or

development; and I had previously shown that in this case the phase

of development in question is marked by a change of phraseology—a

discarding of objective terms for the adoption of subjective when the

speaker has occasion to speak of self. And now I showed that in the

fact here before us we have a precisely analogous proof: in exactly the

same way as psychology marks for us “the transition in the individual,”

philology marks for us “the transition in the race.”

 

In the foregoing _résumé_ of the present instalment of my work I have

aimed only at giving an outline sketch of the main features. And

even these main features have been so much abbreviated that it is

questionable whether more harm than good will not have been done to my

argument by so imperfect a summary of it. Nevertheless, as a general

result, I think that two things must now have been rendered apparent

to every impartial mind. First, that the opponents of evolution have

conspicuously failed to discharge their _onus probandi_, or to justify

the allegation that the human mind constitutes a great and unique

exception to the otherwise uniform law of evolution. Second, that not

only is this allegation highly improbable _a priori_, and incapable

of proof _a posteriori_, but that all the evidence that can possibly

be held to bear upon the subject makes directly on the side of its

disproof. The only semblance of an argument to be adduced in its

favour rests upon the distinction between ideation as conceptual and

non-conceptual. That such a distinction exists I freely admit; but

that it is a distinction of kind I emphatically deny. For I have shown

that the comparatively few writers who still continue to regard it as

such, found their arguments on a psychological analysis which is of a

demonstrably imperfect character; that no one of them has ever paid

any attention at all to the actual process of psychogenesis as this

occurs in a growing child; and that, with the exception of Professor

Max Müller, the same has to be said with regard to their attitude

towards the “witness of philology.” Touching the psychogenesis of a

child, I have shown that there is unquestionable demonstration of a

gradual and uninterrupted passage from the one order of ideation to the

other; that so long as the child’s intelligence is moving only in the

non-conceptual sphere, it is not distinguishable in any one feature

of psychological import from the intelligence of the higher mammalia;

that when it begins to assume the attributes of conceptual ideation,

the process depends on the development of true self-consciousness out

of the materials supplied by that form of pre-existing or receptual

self-consciousness which the infant shares with the lower animals;

that the condition to this advance in mental evolution is given by a

perceptibly progressive development of those powers of denotative and

connotative utterance which are found as far down in the psychological

scale as the talking birds; that in the growing intelligence of a child

we have thus as complete a history of “ontogeny,” in its relation to

“phylogeny,” as that upon which the embryologist is accustomed to rely

when he reads the morphological history of a species in the epitome

which is furnished by the development of an individual; and, therefore,

that those are without excuse who, elsewhere adopting the principles

of evolution, have gratuitously ignored the direct evidence of

psychological transmutation which is thus furnished by the life-history

of every individual human being.

 

Again, as regards the independent witness of philology, if we were

to rely on authority alone, the halting and often contradictory

opinions which from time to time have been expressed by Professor Max

Müller with reference to our subject, are greatly outweighed by those

of all his brother philologists. But, without in any way appealing

to authority further than to accept matters of fact on which all

philologists are agreed, I have purposely given Professor Max Müller an

even more representative place than any of the others, fully stated the

nature of his objections, and supplied what appears to me abundantly

sufficient answers. So far as I can understand the reasons of his

dissent from conclusions which his own admirable work has materially

helped to support, they appear to arise from the following grounds.

First, a want of clearness with regard to the principles of evolution

in general:[341] second, a failure clearly or constantly to recognize

that the roots of Aryan speech are demonstrably very far from primitive

in the sense of being aboriginal: third, a want of discrimination

between ideas as general and generic, or synthetic and unanalytical:

fourth, the gratuitous and demonstrably false assumption that in order

to name a mind must first conceive. Of these several grounds from

which his dissent appears to spring, the last is perhaps the most

important, seeing that it is the one upon which he most expressly

rears his objections. But if I have proved anything, I have proved

that there is a power of affixing verbal or other signs as marks of

merely receptual associations, and that this power is _invariably_

antecedent to the origin of conceptual utterance in the only case

where this origin admits of being directly observed—_i.e._, in the

psychogenesis of a child. Again, in the case of pre-historic man, so

far as the palæontology of speech furnishes evidence upon the subject,

this makes altogether in favour of the view that in the race, as in

the individual, denotation preceded denomination, as antecedent and

consequent. Nay, I doubt whether Max Müller himself would disagree with

Geiger where the latter tersely says, in a passage hitherto unquoted,

“Why is it that the further we trace words backwards the less meaning

do they present? I know not of any other answer to be given than that

the further they go back the less conceptuality do they betoken.”[342]

Nor can he refuse to admit, with the same authority, that “conceptual

thought (_Begriff_) allows itself to be traced backwards into an ever

narrowing circle, and inevitably tends to a point where there is no

longer either thought or speech.”[343] But if these things cannot be

denied by Max Müller himself, I am at a loss to understand why he

should part company with other philologists with regard to the origin

of conceptual terms. With them he asserts that there can be no concepts

without words (spoken or otherwise), and with them he maintains that

when the meanings of words are traced back as far as philology can

trace them, they obviously tend to the vanishing point of which Geiger

speaks. Yet, merely on the ground that this vanishing point can never

be actually reached by the investigations of philology—_i.e._, that

words cannot record the history of their own birth,—he stands out for

an interruption of the principle of continuity at the place where words

originate. A position so unsatisfactory I can only explain by supposing

that he has unconsciously fallen into the fallacy of concluding that

because all A is B, therefore all B is A. Finding that there can be no

concepts without names, he concludes that there can be no names without

concepts.[344] And on the basis of such a conclusion he naturally finds

it impossible to explain how either names or concepts could have had

priority in time: both, it seems, must have been of contemporaneous

origin; and, if this were so, it is manifestly impossible to account

for the natural genesis of either. But the whole of this trouble is

imaginary. Once discard the plainly illogical inference that because

names are necessary to concepts, therefore concepts are necessary

to names, and the difficulty is at an end. Now, I have proved, _ad

nauseam_, that there are names and names: names denotative, and names

denominative; names receptual, as well as names conceptual. Even if

we had not had the case of the growing child actually to prove the

process—a case which he, in common with all my other opponents, in

this connexion ignores,—on general grounds alone, and especially from

our observations on the lower animals, we might have been practically

certain that the faculty of sign-making _must_ have preceded that of

_thinking the signs_. And whether these pre-conceptual signs were

made by gesture, grimace, intonation, articulation, or all combined,

clearly no difference would arise so far as any question of their

influence on psychogenesis is concerned. As a matter of fact, we

happen to know that the semiotic artifice of articulating vocal tones

for purposes of denotation, dates back so far as to bring us within

philologically measurable distance of the origin of denomination, or

conceptual thought—although we have seen good reason to conclude that

before that time tone, gesture, and grimace must have been much more

extensively employed in sign-making by aboriginal man than they now

are by any of the lower animals. So that, upon the whole, unless it

can be shown that my distinction between denotation and denomination

is untenable—unless, for instance, it can be shown that an infant

requires to think of names as such before it can learn to utter

them,—then I submit that no shadow of a difficulty lies against the

theory of evolution in the domain of philology. While, on the other

hand, all the special facts as well as all the general principles

hitherto revealed by this science make entirely for the conclusion,

that pre-conceptual denotation laid the psychological conditions which

were necessary for the subsequent growth of conceptual denomination;

and, therefore, yet once again to quote the high authority of Geiger,

“Speech created Reason; before its advent mankind was reasonless.”[345]

 

And if this is true of philology, assuredly it is no less true of

psychology. For “the development of speech is only a copy of that chain

of processes, which began with the dawn of [human] consciousness, and

eventually ends in the construction of the most abstract idea.”[346]

Unless, therefore, it can be shown that my distinction between ideation

as receptual and conceptual is invalid, I know not how my opponents

are to meet the results of the foregoing analysis. Yet, if this

distinction should be denied, not only would they require to construct

the science of psychology anew; they would place themselves in the

curious position of repudiating the very distinction on which their

whole argument is founded. For I have everywhere been careful to place

it beyond question that what I have called receptual ideation, in all

its degrees, is identical with that which is recognized by my opponents

as non-conceptual; and as carefully have I everywhere shown that with

them I fully recognize the psychological difference between this order

of ideation and that which is conceptual. The only point in dispute,

therefore, is as to the possibility of a natural transition from the

one to the other. It is for them to show the impossibility. This they

have hitherto most conspicuously failed to do. On the other hand, I

now claim to have established the possibility beyond the reach of a

reasonable question. For I claim to have shown that the _probability_

of such a transition having previously occurred in the race, as it now occurs in every individual, is a probability that has been raised tower-like by the accumulated knowledge of the nineteenth century.