THE PSYCHOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE IDEA OF SPEECH.
“Speech is morning to the mind;
It spreads the beauteous images abroad,
Which else lie dark and buried in the soul.”
From abstract and _à priori_ considerations, we have arrived at the
conclusion that language was achieved or created by the human race,
by the unconscious or spontaneous exercise of divinely implanted
powers; that it was a faculty analogous to and closely implicated
with that of thought, and, like thought, developing itself with[59]
the aid of time. The idea of speech was innate, and the evolution
of that idea may be traced in the growth and history of language.
It is most important to have a clear conception of the fact that
this development did not result from an atomistic[60] reunion of
parts, but from the vitality derived from an inward principle.
Language was formed by a process not of crystalline accretion but
of germinal development. Every essential part of language existed
as completely (although only implicitly) in the primitive germ,
as the petals of a flower exist in the bud before the mingled
influences of the sun and the air have caused it to unfold.
Our belief thus arrived at--viz., that language was an achievement
of the human genius which God implanted in the primeval man, a
development of the faculty with which he endowed our race--does
not at all necessitate the belief in a period when man was unable
to communicate with man. The exercise of the faculty may have
been rapid in that young and noble nature to a degree which
now we cannot even conceive. A few imitative roots, uttered
under the guidance of a divine instinct, and aided by the play
of intelligence in movement and feature, would with wonderful
ease grow into a language sufficient for the needs of a nascent
humanity, and the living germ would soon bud and bourgeon by the
very law of its production. Even if we were compelled to believe
that this language was at first of the scantiest character, we see
in this supposition nothing more absurd than in the certainty that
knowledge and science, philosophy and art, are the slow, gradual,
and toilsome conquests of an ever progressive race. It is now well
understood that even the use of the senses has to be learnt,--that
it is only by practice that we are able to discriminate distances
in the variously-coloured surface which is all that we really see.
Why should it then be unnatural to suppose that speech also was at
first only implicitly bestowed on us, and that it required time and
experience to develop fully the implanted capacity?
How far the growth of language was affected by external
circumstances,--as, for instance, by the impress of individual
minds, by the aristocracy or even autocracy of philosophic
bodies, by the influence of sex, by the variations of climate,
by the convulsions of history, by the slow change of religious
or political convictions, and even by the laws of euphony and
organisation, we may consider hereafter; but we must first of all
enter on two very interesting preliminary inquiries, viz., 1,
How did words first come to be accepted as signs at all? and, 2,
By what processes did men hit upon the words themselves? Or, to
put the questions differently: 1, How did various modulations of
the human voice acquire any significance by being connected with
outward or inward phenomena? and, 2, What special causes led in
special cases to the choice of some particular modulations rather
than of any other?
I am well aware that these questions may appear ridiculous to any
one who is entirely unaccustomed to these branches of inquiry; and
they may possibly be inclined to set the whole matter at rest by a
dogmatism or a jeer. They will say perhaps:
“Here babbling Insight shouts in Nature’s ears
His last conundrum of the orbs and spheres;
There Self-inspection sucks his little thumb,
With ‘Whence am I?’ and ‘Wherefore did I come?’”[61]
With readers of such a temperament it is idle to reason, nor do we
expect that, while the world lasts, ignorance will cease to take
itself for knowledge, and denounce what it cannot understand. To
others we will merely say that these inquiries have occupied, and
are still occupying in an increasing degree, some of the most
profound and sober intellects in Europe, and that (in the words of
Plato) ‘wise men do not usually talk nonsense.’
With this remark, let us proceed to our first question: How came
sounds--mere vibrations of the atmosphere--to be accepted as signs,
_i.e._ to be used as words?
But (as one inquiry leads us back, perpetually, to another, even
until “all things end in a mystery”), we must here again pause
for a moment to ask what _is_ a word? So vast an amount has been
written in answer to this inquiry, that it is obviously impossible
to do more than state the conclusion[62] we adopt, with a mere hint
as to the ground on which we adopt it.
Horne Tooke maintained that words are “the names of things,” a
definition most obviously inadequate; others have called them “the
pictures of ideas,”[63] and although this definition is not without
its value, yet the systematic perversion of the word “idea,”
renders it insufficient. Harris devotes a chapter to establishing
the definition that “Words are the symbols of ideas, both general
and particular; yet, of the general, primarily, essentially, and
immediately; of the particular only secondly, accidentally, and
mediately.” But this is very questionable and cumbrous; and, on the
whole, we believe that no better definition can be given than that
of the late Mr. Garnett,[64] that words represent “_conceptions_
founded on _perceptions_,” or “that words express the _relations_
of things.” They do not and cannot express “an intrinsic meaning,
constituting them the counterparts and equivalents of thought.
They _are_ nothing more, and _can_ be nothing more, than signs
of relations, and it is a contradiction in terms to affirm that
a relation can be inherent.” “Our knowledge of beings,” says
M. Peisse,[65] “is purely indirect, limited, relative; it does
not reach to the beings themselves in their absolute reality
and essences, but only to their accidents, their modes, their
relations, their limitations, their differences, their qualities;
all which are manners of conceiving and knowing, which not only
do not impart to knowledge the absolute character which some
persons attribute to it, but even positively exclude it. Matter
(or existence, the object of sensible perception), only falls
within the sphere of our knowledge through its qualities; mind
only by its modifications; and these qualities and modifications
are all that _can_ be comprehended and expressed in the object.
The object itself, considered absolutely, remains out of the reach
of all perception.” It is an obvious inference that, as we can
only talk of what we know, and as we can only know the relations
of things, words _are the medium of expressing_ (not the _nature_
of things, which is incognisable), but the _observed relations
between things_. They are revelations not of the outward, but of
the inward,--not of the universe, but of the thoughts of man.
Leaving to metaphysicians all further discussion of this question,
we again recur to our inquiry, How came words to be accepted
as significant of these relations? Thought[66] and speech are
inseparably connected; the very root of the word Man[67] implies,
in Sanskrit, “a thinking being,” and it is well known that there
is a close connection between “ratio” and “oratio,” and that ἄλογα
ζῶα means animals, not only “without speech,” but “without reason.”
Eloquence, in fact, is genius, and the greatest poet or orator is
he who has most command over his native tongue.
It has even been a question with some philosophers whether
thought is _possible_ without speech,--whether, for instance,
blind-deaf-mutes (like the American girl, Laura Bridgman), are
capable[68] of exercising the faculty of reason until they have
been taught an artificial method of expression?
Certain it is that the child begins to _speak_ when it begins to
_think_, and that its first intelligent perception of relations
is followed by its first articulate utterances. We may illustrate
this remark in an interesting manner. We find it stated in the
Jadschurveda, that the first words uttered by the first man were,
“I am myself,” and that, when called, he answered, “I am he.” With
all due deference to the ancient philosopher who held this belief,
we may safely assert that such a thing was impossible without some
special interposition; for the growth of a sense of individuality
is extremely slow, and comes to children long after their main
perceptions. A poet--in whom nothing is more remarkable than his
profound learning and metaphysical accuracy--truly says:
“The baby new to earth and sky,
What time his tender palm is prest
Against the circle of the breast,
Hath never thought that ‘This is I:’
But as he grows he gathers much,
And learns the use of ‘I’ and ‘me,’
And finds ‘I am not what I see,
And other than the things I touch.’”[69]
And this gives us at once the true explanation of the fact, that it
is some time before a child learns to regard itself as a subject,
and therefore, that it[70] objectises itself in all its language.
It would say, not “I want an apple,” but “Charlie wants an apple;”
not even “give _me_,”--so frequently as “give Charlie.” When Hamlet
signs himself as ‘The machine that is to me Hamlet,’ he only shows,
by an extreme instance, the remarkable difficulty that a man always
has in mastering this very conception of individuality, which the
Hindoo philosophy would seem to regard as a primitive intuition.
By these remarks we have greatly cleared the way for our
explanation of the manner in which words originated;--an
explanation[71] which is purely psychological, and which was first
promulgated in this shape by M. Steinthal.
Man has the faculty of interpretation, or of using words for signs,
as completely as he has the faculties of sight and hearing; and
words are the means he employs for the exercise of the former
faculty, just as the eye and the ear are employed as the organs of
the latter.
The power of speech depends on the power of abstraction, _i.e._,
of transforming intuitions into ideas.[72] Let us explain. At the
sight of a horse galloping, or of a plain white with snow, the
primitive man formed, at first, one undivided image; the motion
and the horse, the field and the snow, were unseparated. But, by
language, the act of running was distinguished from the creature
that ran, and the colour separated from the thing coloured. Each
of these two elements became fixed in an isolated word, and so
the word dismembered the complete perception. But, from another
point of view, the word is more extended than the presentation;
_e.g._, the word “white” expresses not only an attribute of snow,
but of all white objects; its meaning, then, is more abstract
and indeterminate than that of “white snow.” Instead of only
embracing an existence, or an object in an accidental state, a
word represents the thing without its _accidental_ characters,
which are removed by abstraction, and indicates it under _all_ the
circumstances in which it may be placed.
The transformation, then, of intuitions into ideas, by the freedom
and activity of the human intelligence, constitutes the essence of
a word, although the speaker may be as unconscious of the process
as he is of the organic mechanisms which give utterance to his
thoughts.
I. ‘As for the conditions under which articulate language first
appeared, M. Steinthal represents them as follows. At the origin
of humanity the soul and the body were in such mutual dependence
that all the emotions[73] of the soul had their echo in the body,
principally in the organs of the respiration and the voice. This
sympathy of soul and body, still found in the infant and the
savage, was intimate and fruitful in the primitive man; each
intuition awoke in him an accent or a sound.’ This was the first
step; and in this fact lies the germ of truth contained in the
doctrines of the analogists;[74] since there must have been some
reason in the nature of things, why certain impressions or feelings
were connected with certain sounds rather than with certain
others. We may be totally unable to point out this connection
in many cases, and even while recognising a natural relation
between certain sounds of the human voice and certain material
phenomena, we may deny the very possibility of such a relation
between a spiritual phenomenon and its physical sign. And yet we
feel a strong repugnance at allowing caprice or chance to have any
considerable share in the origin of language. It can, at least, be
fairly argued that there is nothing purely arbitrary in the work of
the divine Demiurgus.
II. ‘Another law, which played a no less essential part in the
creation of language, was _the association[75] of ideas_. In
virtue of this law, the sound which accompanied an intuition,
associated itself in the soul with the intuition itself, so closely
that the sound and the intuition presented themselves to the
consciousness as _inseparable_, and were equally inseparable in the
recollection.’ This was the second step.
III. Finally, the word became a middle term of reminiscence, a
tach between the external object and the inward impression. “The
sound[76] became _a word_ by forming a bond between the image
obtained by the vision, and the image preserved in the memory;
in other words, _it acquired significance, and became an element
of language_. The image of the remembrance, and the image of the
vision, are not wholly identical; _e.g._, I see a horse; _no_
other horse that I have ever seen resembles it absolutely in
colour, size, &c.: the general conception recalled by the word
‘horse’ involves only the abstracted[77] attributes common to all
the animals of the same genus. It is this collection of common
attributes that constitutes the significance of the sound.”
Thus M. Steinthal attributes the appearance of language to the
unconscious action of psychological laws; and as these laws acted
spontaneously in the first human beings, it is quite clear that
these speculations involve no approval of the untenable Epicurean
belief in a long period of mutism and savageness. We cannot but
think that the beauty, ingenuity, and simplicity of these views
will commend them to general acceptance.
We may here give one or two passing hints of the way in which these
laws were influenced by organism.
One very simple fact is, that of course the _impressions_, &c.,
which come earliest would naturally be connected with the _sounds_
that come earliest. For instance, the words for father and mother,
which are alike half the world over, are, as we should have
expected, formed of easy and simple[78] syllables; being indeed
the first labial sounds of the infant lisping: had we found in
any of them the letters which represent late-coming and difficult
sounds,[79] we should have been justly surprised.
Again, Grimm[80] has remarked that the more ancient a language
is, the more clearly do we find in it the distinction between
masculine and feminine inflections. “Nothing,” adds M. Renan,
“proves it more strongly than the to-us-inexplicable tendency which
led the primitive nations to suppose a sex in all beings, even
inanimate ones. A language, formed in our days, would suppress
the gender[81] in all cases, except perhaps, those where men and
women are concerned.” This peculiarity is doubtless due to the
influence of women. In ancient times, the life of woman was far
more widely separated than now from that of men; and even in later
days, when they were dwarfed in the isolation of the gynæceum, we
can easily understand how the peculiarities of their life would
have influenced the language they employed. The difference between
their idioms and those of men is still very incisive in some
African dialects; and the fact that men in speaking _to_ women
are obliged to employ particular inflections, proves that those
inflections must have been used by the women themselves. It is this
which causes the strange difference between Sanskrit and Prâkrit;
in the Hindoo dramas, Sanskrit is used by the men, Prâkrit by the
women.
But the difference is _due to the difference of organisation_. If
“a” and “i” are in all languages the vowels characteristic of the
_feminine_, it is without doubt because those vowels are better
suited to the feminine organ than the masculine sounds “o” and
“ou.” A Hindoo commentator, explaining the 10th verse of the Third
book of Manou,[82] where it is commanded to give to women sweet
and agreeable names, recommends that in these names the letter “a”
should predominate.
It is observable, too, that the influence of climate on language is
in point of fact another result of the influence of organism. The
idiom of Sybaris is not that of Sparta. The languages of the South
are limpid, euphonic, and harmonious, as though they had received
an impress from the transparency of their heaven, and the soft,
sweet sounds of the winds that sigh among their woods. On the other
hand, in the hirrients and gutturals, the burr and roughness of
the Northern tongues, we catch an echo of the breaker bursting on
their crags, and the crashing of the pine-branch over the cataract.
Rousseau[83] has pointed to the fact that the languages of the rich
and prodigal South, being the daughters of passion, are poetic
and musical, while those of the North, the gloomy daughters of
necessity, bear a trace of their hard origin, and express by rude
sounds rude sensations. It is an additional argument against the
existence of a language primitive, revealed, or innate, that every
known language bears on itself the deep traces of predominant
local influences. “It is for this reason that the confusion of
tongues and the dispersion of nations are represented by Scripture
as synchronous events in the magnificent history of Babel, which,
perhaps, we may be permitted to regard as one of those sublime
parables so frequent in the sacred books. This was the opinion of
the great Leibnitz.”
These are but easy illustrations of a wide and difficult subject;
but the influence of organism on language has not yet been very
fully analysed, and many of the laws which philologists have
advanced remain to some degree uncertain. Those who desire to
follow the subject may find some very amusing illustrations in the
pages of M. Nodier, one of which we have[84] relegated into the
note.