THE WITNESS OF PHILOLOGY (_continued_).
In the last chapter we have been concerned with the philology of
predication. In the present chapter I propose to consider the philology
of conception. Of course the distinction is not one that can be very
sharply drawn, because, as fully shown in my chapter on Speech, every
concept embodies a judgment, and therefore every denominative term is a
condensed proposition. Nevertheless, as my opponents have laid so much
stress on full or formal predication, as distinguished from conception,
I have thought it desirable, as much as possible, to keep these two
branches of our subject separate. Therefore, having now disposed of
all opposition that can possibly be raised on the ground of formal
predication, I will conclude by throwing the light of philology on the
origin of material predication, or the passage of receptual denotation
into conceptual denomination, as this is shown to have occurred in the
pre-historic evolution of the race.
It will be remembered that, under my analysis of the growth of
predication, much more stress has been laid in the last chapter than in
previous chapters on what I have called the protoplasm of predication
as this occurs in the hitherto undifferentiated “sentence-word.”
While treating of the psychology of predication in the chapter on
Speech, I did not go further back in my analysis than to point out
how the “nascent” or “pre-conceptual” propositions of young children
are brought about by the mere apposition of denotative terms—such
apposition having been shown to be due to sensuous association when
under the guidance of the “logic of events.” But when I came to deal
with the philology of predication, it became evident that there
was even an earlier phase of the faculty in question than that of
apposing denotative terms by sensuous association. For, as we have so
recently seen, philologists have proved that even before there were
any denotative terms respectively significant of objects, qualities,
actions, states, or relations, there were sentence-words which combined
in one vague mass the meanings afterwards apportioned to substantives,
adjectives, verbs, prepositions, &c., with the consequence that the
only kind of apposition which could be called into play for the purpose
of indicating the particular significance intended to belong to such
a word on particular occasions, was the apposition of gesture-signs.
Now, I had two reasons for thus postponing our consideration of what
is undoubtedly the earliest phase of articulate sign-making. In the
first place, it seemed to me that I might more easily lead the reader
to a clear understanding of the subject by beginning with a phase of
predication which he could most readily appreciate, than by suddenly
bringing him into the presence of a germ-like origin which is far
from being so readily intelligible. But over and above this desire
to proceed from the familiar to the unfamiliar, I had, in the second
place, a further and a better reason for not dealing with the ultimate
germ of articulate sign-making so long as I was dealing only with the
psychology of our subject. This reason was, that in the development of
speech as exhibited by the growing child—which, of course, furnishes
our only material for a study of the subject from a psychological point
of view—the original or germinal phase in question does not appear
to be either so marked, so important, or, comparatively speaking, of
such prolonged duration as it was in the development of speech in the
race. To use biological terms, this the earliest phase in the evolution
of speech has been greatly foreshortened in the ontogeny of mankind,
as compared with what it appears to have been in the phylogeny. The
result, of course, is that we should gain but an inadequate idea of
its importance, were we to estimate it by a merely psychological
analysis of what we now find in the life-history of the individual.
It is perfectly true, as Professor Max Müller says, that “if an
English child says ‘Up,’ that _up_ is, to his mind, noun, verb, and
adjective, all in one.” Nevertheless, in a young child, from the very
first, there is a marked tendency to observe the distinctions which
belong to the principal parts of speech. The earliest words uttered
by my own children have always been nouns and proper names, such as
“Star,” “Mamma,” “Papa,” “Ilda,” &c.; and although, later on, some of
these earliest words might assume the functions of adjectives by being
used in apposition with other nouns subsequently acquired (such as
“Mamma-ba,” for a sheep, and “Ilda-ba” for a lamb), neither the nouns
nor the adjectives came to be used as verbs. It has been previously
shown that the use of adjectives is acquired almost as soon as that
of substantives; and although the poverty of the child’s vocabulary
then often necessitates the adjectives being used as substantives,
the substantives as adjectives, and both as rudimentary propositions,
still there remains a distinction between them as object-words and
quality-words. Similarly, although action-words and condition-words
are often forced into the position of object-words and quality-words,
it is apparent that the primary idea attaching to them is that which
properly belongs to a verb. And, of course, the same remarks apply to
relation-words, such as “Up.”
Take, for instance, the cases of pre-conceptual predication which
were previously quoted from Mr. Sully, namely, “Bow-wow” = “That is
a dog;” “Ot” = “This milk is hot;” “Dow” = “My plaything is down;”
“Dit ki” = “Sister is crying;” “Dit naughty” = “Sister is naughty;”
“Dit dow ga” = “Sister is down on the grass.” In all these cases it is
evident that the child is displaying a true perception of the different
functions which severally belong to the different parts of speech; and
so far as psychological analysis alone could carry us, there would
be nothing to show that the forcing of one part of speech into the
office of another, which so frequently occurs at this age, is due to
anything more than the exigencies of expression where as yet there
are scarcely any words for the conveyance of meaning of any kind.
Therefore, on grounds of psychological analysis alone, I do not see
that we are justified in arguing from these facts that a young child
has no appreciation of the difference between the functions of the
different parts of speech—any more than we should were we to argue
that a grown man has no such appreciation when he extends the meaning
of a substantive (such as “pocket”) so as to embrace the function of
an adjective on the one hand (_e.g._ “pocket-book”), and of a verb on
the other (_e.g._ “he _cannoned_ off the white, and _pocketed_ the
red”). What may be termed this grammatical abuse of words becomes an
absolute necessity where the vocabulary is small, as we well know when
trying to express ourselves in a foreign language with which we are
but slightly acquainted. And, of course, the smaller the vocabulary,
the greater is such necessity; so that it is greatest of all when an
infant is only just emerging from its infancy. Therefore, as just
remarked, on grounds of psychological analysis alone, I do not think
we should be justified in concluding that the first-speaking child has
no appreciation of what we understand by parts of speech; and it is on
account of the uncertainty which here obtains as between necessity and
incapacity, that I reserved my consideration of “sentence-words” for
the independent light which has been thrown upon them by the science of
comparative philology.
Now, when investigated by this light, it appears, as already
observed, that the protoplasmic condition of language prior to its
differentiation into parts of speech was of much longer duration in
the race than, relatively speaking, it is in the individual. Moreover,
it appears to have been of relatively much greater importance to the
subsequent development of language. How, then, is this difference
to be explained? I think the explanation is sufficiently simple. An
infant of to-day is born into the medium of already-spoken language;
and long before it is itself able to imitate the words which it hears,
it is well able to understand a large number of them. Consequently,
while still literally an _infant_, the use of grammatical forms is
being constantly borne in upon its mind; and, therefore, it is not at
all surprising that, when it first begins to use articulate signs, it
should already be in possession of some amount of knowledge of their
distinctive meanings as names of objects, qualities, actions, states,
or relations. Indeed, it is only as such that the infant has acquired
its knowledge of these signs at all; and hence, if there is any wonder
in the matter, it is that the first-speaking child should exhibit so
much vagueness as it does in the matter of grammatical distinction.
But how vastly different must have been the case of primitive man!
The infant, as a child of to-day, finds a grammar already made to its
use, and one which it is bound to learn with the first learning of
denotative names. But the infant, as an adult in primeval time, was
under the necessity of slowly elaborating his grammar together with his
denotative names; and this, as we have previously seen, he only could
do by the aid of gesture and grimace. Therefore, while the acquisition
of names and forms of speech by infantile man must have been thus in
chief part dependent on gesture and grimace, the acquisition by the
infantile child is now not only independent of gesture and grimace, but
actively inimical to both. The already-constructed grammar of speech
is the evolutionary substitute of gesture, from which it originally
arose; and, hence, so soon as a child of to-day begins to speak,
gesture-signs begin at once to be starved out by grammatical forms. But
in the history of the race gesture-signs were the nursing-mothers of
grammatical forms; and the more that their progeny grew, the greater
must have been the variety of functions which the parents were called
upon to perform. In other words, during the infancy of our race the
growth of articulate language must not only have depended, but also
reacted upon that of gesture-signs—increasing their number, their
intricacy, and their refinement, up to the time when grammatical forms
were sufficiently far evolved to admit of the gesture-signs becoming
gradually dispensed with. Then, of course, Saturn-like, gesticulation
was devoured by its own offspring; the relations between signs
appealing to the eye and to the ear became gradually reversed; and,
as is now the case with every growing child, the language of formal
utterance sapped the life of its more informal progenitor.
We are now in a position to consider the exact psychological relation
of sentence-words to denotative and receptually connotative words. It
will be remembered that I have everywhere spoken of sentence-words as
representing an even more primitive order of ideation than denotative
words, and, _a fortiori_, than receptually connotative words. On the
other hand, in earlier parts of this treatise I showed that both the
last-mentioned kinds of words occur in children when they first begin
to speak, and may even be traced so low down in the psychological scale
as the talking birds. This apparent ambiguity, therefore, now requires
to be cleared up. Can anything, it may be reasonably asked, in the
shape of spoken language be more primitive than the very first words
which are spoken by a child, or even by a parrot? But, if not, how can
I agree with those philologists who conclude that there is an even
still more primitive stage of conceptual evolution to be recognized in
sentence-words?
Briefly, my answer to these questions is that in the young child
and the talking bird denotative-words, connotative-words, and
sentence-words are all equally primitive; or, if there is any priority
to be assigned, that it must be assigned to the first-named. But the
reason of this, I hold to be, is, that the child and the bird are
both living in an already-developed medium of spoken language, and,
therefore, as recently stated, have only to learn their denotative
names by special association, while primitive man had himself to
fashion his names out of the previously inarticulate materials of his
own psychology. Now this, as we have also seen, he only could do by
such associations of sounds and gestures as in the first instance
must have conveyed meanings of a pre-conceptually predicative kind.
In the absence of any sounds already given—and therefore already
_agreed upon_—as denotative names, there could be no possibility of
primitive man arbitrarily _assigning_ such names; and thus there could
have been no parallel to a young child who receptually _acquires_
them. In order that he should assign names, primitive man must first
have had occasion to make his pre-conceptual statements about the
objects, qualities, &c., the names of which afterwards grew out of
these statements, or sentence-words. Adam, indeed, gave names to
animals; but Adam was already in possession of conceptual thought, and
therefore in a psychological position to appreciate the importance of
what he was about. But the “pre-Adamite man” who is now before us could
not possibly have invented names for their own sakes, unless he were
already capable of thinking about names _as_ names, and, therefore,
already in possession of that very conceptual thought which, as we
have now so often seen, depends upon names for its origin. Even with
all our own fully developed powers of conceptual thought, we cannot
_name_ an object when in the society of men with whose language we
are totally unacquainted, without _predicating_ something about that
object by means of gestures or other signs. Therefore, without further
discussion, it must be obvious—not only, as already shown, that there
is here no exact parallel between ontogenesis and phylogenesis, and
that we have thus a full explanation why sentence-words were of so much
more importance to the infant man than they are to the infant child,
but further and consequently—that the question whether sentence-words
are more primitive than denotative words is not a question that
is properly stated, unless it be also stated whether the question
applies to the individual or to the race. As regards the individual
of to-day, it cannot be said that there is any priority, historical
or psychological, of sentence-words over denotative words, or even
over receptually connotative words of a low order of extension. Nay,
we have seen that the leading principles of grammatical form admit of
being acquired by the child together with his acquisition of words of
all kinds, and that even talking birds are able to distinguish between
names as severally names of objects, qualities, states, or actions.
Thus we find that to almost any order of intelligence which is already
surrounded by the medium of spoken language, the understanding—and, in
the presence of any power of imitative utterance, the acquisition—of
denotative names as signs or marks of corresponding objects, qualities,
&c., is, if anything, a more primitive act than that of using a
sentence-word; but that in the absence of such an already-existing
medium, sentence-words are more primitive than denotative names.
Nevertheless, it is of importance to note how low an order of
receptual ideation is capable of learning a denotative name by special
association, because this fact proves that as soon as mankind advanced
to the stage where they first began to coin their sentence-words, they
must already have been far above the psychological level required
for the acquisition of denotative words, _if only such words had
previously been in existence_. Consequently, we can well understand
how such words would soon have begun to come into existence through
the habitual employment of sentence-words in relation to particular
objects, qualities, states, actions, &c.; by such special associations,
sentence-words would readily degenerate into merely semiotic marks.
How long or how short a time this genesis of relatively “empty words”
out of the primordially “full words” may have occupied, it is now
impossible to say; but the important thing for us to notice is, that
during the whole of this time—whatever it may have been—the mind of
primitive man was already far above the psychological level which is
required for the apprehension of a denotative name.[264]
So much, then, for the first class of considerations which has been
opened up by throwing upon the results of our psychological analysis
the independent light of philological research. I will now pass on to a
second class, which is even of more importance.
From the fact that sentence-words played so all-important a part in the
origin of speech, and that in order to do so they essentially depended
on the co-operation of gestures with which they were accompanied, so
that in the resulting “complex of sound and gesture the sound had
no meaning apart from the gesture;” from these now well-established
facts, we may gain some additional light on a question previously
considered—namely, the extent to which primitive words were “abstract”
or “concrete,” “particular” or “general,” and, therefore, “receptual”
or “conceptual.” According to Professor Max Müller, “the science of
language has proved by irrefragable evidence that human thought, in the
true sense of that word—that is, human language—did not proceed from
the concrete to the abstract, but from the abstract to the concrete.
Roots, the elements out of which all language has been constructed,
are abstract, never concrete; and it is by predicating these abstract
concepts of this or that, by localizing them here or there, in fact by
applying the category of οὐϚία or substance, to the roots, that the
first foundation of our language and our thought were laid.”[265]
Here, to begin with, there is an inherent contradiction. When it is
said that the roots in question already presented abstract concepts, it
becomes a contradiction to add that “the first foundations of language
and thought were laid by applying the category of substance to the
roots.” For, if these roots already presented abstract concepts, they
already presented the distinctive feature of human “thought,” whose
“foundations,” therefore, must have been “laid” somewhere further back
in the history of mankind. But, besides this inherent contradiction, we
have here an emphatic re-statement of the two radical errors which I
previously mentioned, and which everywhere mar the philosophical value
of Professor Max Müller’s work. The first is his tacit assumption that
the roots of Aryan speech represent the original elements of articulate
language. The second is that, upon the basis of this assumption, the
science of language has proved, by irrefragable evidence, that human
thought proceeded from the abstract to the concrete—or, in other
words, that it sprang into being Minerva-like, already equipped with
the divine inheritance of conceptual wisdom. Now, in entertaining this
theory, Professor Max Müller is not only in direct conflict with all
his philological brethren, but likewise, as we have previously seen,
often compelled to be irreconcilably inconsistent with himself.[266]
Moreover, as we have likewise seen, his assumption as to the aboriginal
nature of Aryan roots, on which his transcendental doctrine rests, is
intrinsically absurd, and thus does not really require the united voice
of professed philologists for its condemnation. Therefore, what the
science of language _does_ prove “by irrefragable evidence” is, _not_
that these roots of the Aryan branch of language are the aboriginal
elements of human speech, or indices of the aboriginal condition of
human ideation; but that, being the survivals of incalculably more
primitive and immeasurably more remote phases of word-formation,
they come before us as the already-matured products of conceptual
thought—and, _a fortiori_, that on the basis of these roots alone _the
science of language has absolutely no evidence at all to furnish_ as
touching the matter which Professor Max Müller here alludes to in such
positive terms. In this connection there can be no possible escape from
the tersely expressed conclusion previously quoted from Geiger, and
unanimously entertained as an axiom by philologists in general:—“These
roots are not the primitive roots: we have perhaps in no one single
instance the first aboriginal articulate sound—just as little, of
course, the aboriginal signification.”[267]
But the point which I now wish to bring forward is this. We have
previously seen the source of these unfortunate utterances in Professor
Max Müller’s philology appears to reside in certain prepossessions
which he exhibits in the domain of psychology. For he adopts the
assumption that there can be no order of words which do not, by the
mere fact of their existence, imply concepts: he does not sufficiently
recognize that there may be a power of bestowing names as signs,
without the power of thinking these signs as names. Consequently, the
distinction which, on grounds of comparative psychology, appears to me
so obvious and so necessary—_i.e._ between names as merely denotative
marks due to pre-conceptual association, and denominative judgments due
to conceptual thought—has escaped his sufficient notice. Consequently,
also, he has failed to distinguish between ideas as “general” and what
I have called “generic;” or between an idea that is general because
it is born of an intentional synthesis of the results of a previous
analysis, and an idea that is _generalized_[268] because not yet
differentiated by any intentional analysis, and therefore representing
simply an absence of conceptual thought. My child on first beginning
to speak had a generalized idea of similarity between all kinds of
brightly shining objects, and therefore called them all by the one
denotative name of “star.” The astronomer has a general idea answering
to his denominative name of “star;” but this has been arrived at after
a prolonged course of mental evolution, wherein conceptual analysis
has been engaged in conceptual classification in many and various
directions: it therefore represents the psychological antithesis of the
generalized idea, which was due to the merely sensuous associations
of pre-conceptual thought. Ideas, then, as general and as generic
severally occupy the very antipodes of Mind.
All this we have previously seen. My object in here recurring to the
matter is to show that much additional light may be thrown upon it by
the philological doctrine of “sentence-words,” which Professor Max
Müller, in common with other philologists, fully accepts.
Of all the writers on primitive modes of speech as represented by
existing savages, no one is entitled to speak with so much authority
as Bleek. Now, as a result of his prolonged and first-hand study of
the subject, he is strongly of opinion that aboriginal words were
expressive “not at all of an abstract or general character, but
exclusively concrete or individual.” By this he means that primitive
ideas were what I have called generic. For he says that had a word been
formed from imitation of the sound of a cuckoo, for instance, it could
not possibly have had its meaning limited to the name of that bird;
but would have been extended so as to embrace “the whole situation
so far as it came within the consciousness of the speaker.” That is
to say, it would have become a generic name for the whole recept of
bird, cry, flying, &c., &c., just as to our own children the word
_Ba_=sheep, bleating, grazing, &c. Now, this process of comprising
under one denotative term the hitherto undifferentiated perceptions of
“a whole situation so far as it comes within the consciousness of the
speaker,” is the very opposite of the process whereby a denominative
term is brought to unify, by an act of “generalization,” the previously
well-differentiated concepts between which some analogy is afterwards
discovered. Therefore the absence of any parts of speech in primitive
language is due to a generic order of ideation, whereas the unions
of parts of speech in any languages which present them is due to the
generalizing order of ideation. Or, as Bleek puts it while speaking
of the comparatively undifferentiated condition of South African
languages, “this differs entirely from the principle which prevails in
modern English, where a word, without undergoing any change of form,
may nevertheless belong to different parts of speech. For in English
the parts of speech, though not always differing in sound, are always
accurately distinguished in concept; while in the other case there
was as yet no consciousness of any difference, inasmuch as neither
form nor position had hitherto called attention to anything of the
kind. For forms had not yet made their appearance, and determinate
position [_i.e._ significance expressed by syntax], as, for example,
in Chinese, could only arise in a language of highly advanced internal
formation.”[269]
Indeed, if we consider the matter, it is not conceivable that the case
could be otherwise. No one will maintain that the sentence-words of
young children exhibit the highest elaborations of conceptual thought,
on the ground that they present the highest degree of “generality”
which it is possible for articulate sounds to express. But if this
is not to be suggested as regards the infant child, what possible
ground can there be for suggesting it as regards the infant man, or
for inferring that aboriginal speech must have been expressive of
“general” and “abstract” ideas, merely because the further backwards
that we trace the growth of language the less organized do we find its
structure to be? Clearly, the contradiction arises from a confusion
between ideas as generic and general, or between the extension which
is due to original vagueness and that which is laboriously acquired by
subsequent precision. An Amœba is morphologically more “generalized”
than a Vertebrate; but for this very reason it is the less highly
evolved as an organism. The philology of sentence-words, therefore,
leads us back to a state of ideation wherein as yet the powers of
conceptual thought were in that nascent condition which betokens what
I have called their pre-conceptual stage—or a stage which may be
observed in a comparatively foreshortened state among children before
the dawn of self-consciousness.
There can be no reasonable doubt that during this stage of mental
evolution sentence-words arose in the race as they now do in the
individual, the only difference being that then they had to be invented
instead of learnt. This difference would probably have given a larger
importance to the principle of onomatopœia,[270] and certainly a
much larger importance to the co-operation of gesture, than now
obtains in the otherwise analogous case of young children. But in
the one case as in the other, I think there can be no reasonable
question that sentence-words must have owed their origin to receptual
and pre-conceptual apprehensions of all kinds, whether of objects,
qualities, actions, states, relations, or of any two or more of these
“categories” as they may happen to have been blended in the hitherto
undifferentiating perceptions of aboriginal man.
* * * * *
I must now allude to the results of our previous inquiry touching
“the syntax of gesture-language.” For comparison will show that in
all essential particulars the semiotic construction of this the
most original and immediately graphic mode of communication, bears
a striking resemblance to that which is presented by the earliest
forms of articulate language, both as revealed by philology and in
“baby-talk.”[271] Thus, as we saw, “gesture-language has no grammar
properly so called. The same sign stands for ‘walk,’ ‘walkest,’
‘walking,’ ‘walked,’ ‘walker.’ Adjectives and verbs are not easily
distinguished by the deaf and dumb. Indeed, our elaborate system of
parts of speech is but little applicable to the gesture-language.”
Next, to quote again only one of the numerous examples previously
given to show the primitive order of apposition, whereby the language
of gesture serves to convey a predication, “I should be punished if
I were lazy and naughty” would be put, “I lazy, naughty, no!—lazy,
naughty, I punished; yes!” Again, “to make is too abstract for the
deaf-mute; to show that the tailor makes the coat, or that the
carpenter makes the table, he would represent the tailor sewing the
coat and the carpenter sawing and planing the table. Such a proposition
as ‘Rain makes the land fruitful’ would not come into his way of
thinking: ‘Rain, fall; plants, grow,’ would be his pictorial (_i.e._
receptual) expression.” Elsewhere this writer remarks that the absence
of any distinction between substantive, adjective, and verb, which
is universal in gesture-language, is customary in Chinese, and not
unknown even in English. “To _butter_ bread, to _cudgel_ a man, to
_oil_ machinery, to _pepper_ a dish, and scores of such expressions,
involve action and instrument in one word, and that word a substantive
treated as the root or crude form of a verb. Such expressions are
concretisms, picture-words, gesture-words, as much as the deaf-and-dumb
man’s one sign for ‘butter’ and ‘buttering.’” And similarly as to the
substantive-adjective, in such words as _iron-stone_, _feather-grass_,
_chesnut-horse_, &c.; here the mere apposition of the words
constitutes the one an attribution of the other, as is the case in
gesture-language. And not only in Chinese, but as shown in the last
chapter, in a great number and variety of savage tongues this mode of
construction is habitual. In all these cases distinctions between parts
of speech can be rendered only by syntax; and this syntax is the syntax
of gesture.
I will ask the reader to refer to the whole passage in which
I previously treated of the syntax of gesture,[272] giving
special attention to the points just noted, and also to the
following:—invariable absence of the copula, and frequent absence
of the verb (as “Apple-father-I” = “My father gave me an apple”);
resemblance of sentences to the polysynthetic or unanalyzing type (as
“I-Tom-struck-a-stick” = “Tom struck me with a stick”); the device
whereby syntax, or order of apposition, is made to distinguish between
predicative, attributive, and possessive meanings, and therefore
also between substantives and adjectives; the importance of grimace
in association with gesture (as when a look of inquiry converts an
assertion into a question); the highly instructive means whereby
relational words, and especially pronouns, are rendered in the gestures
of pointing; the no less instructive manner whereby a general idea is
rendered in a summation of particular ideas (as “Did you have soup? did
you have porridge?” &c. = “What did you have for dinner?”); and the
receptual or sensuous source of all gesture-signs which are concerned
in expressing ideas presenting any degree of abstraction (as striking
the hand to signify “hard,” &c.).
Hence, we may everywhere trace a fundamental similarity between the
comparatively undeveloped form of conceptual thought as displayed
in gesture, and that which philology has revealed as distinctive of
early speech. Of course in both cases conceptual thought is there:
the ideation is human, though, comparatively speaking, immature.
But the important point to notice is the curiously close similarity
between the forms of language-structure as revealed in gesture and in
early speech. For no one, I should suppose, can avoid perceiving the
idiographic character of gesture-language, whereby it is more nearly
allied to the purely receptual modes of communication which we have
studied in the lower animals, than is the case with our fully evolved
forms of predication. It therefore seems to me highly suggestive that
the earliest forms and records of spoken language that we possess
(notwithstanding that they are still far from aboriginal), follow so
closely the model which is still supplied to us in the idiographic
gestures of deaf-mutes. Such syntax as there is—_i.e._ such _a putting
in order_ as is expressive of the mode of ideational grouping—so
nearly resembles the syntax of gesture-language, that we can at once
perceive their common psychological source. It is on account of this
structural resemblance between gesture and early speech that I have
devoted so much space to our consideration of the former; and if I do
not now dwell at greater length upon the significance of the analogy,
it is only because this significance appears too obvious to require
further treatment.
There is, however, one point with reference to this analogy on which
a few words must here be said. If there is any truth at all in the
theory of evolution with reference to the human mind, we may be quite
sure, from what has been said in earlier chapters, that tone, gesture,
and grimace preceded articulation as the medium of pre-conceptual
utterance. Therefore, the structural similarity between existing
gesture-language and the earliest records of articulate language now
under consideration, is presumably due, not only to a similarity of
psychological conditions, but also to direct continuity of descent.
Or, as Colonel Mallery well puts it, while speaking of the presumable
origin of spoken language, “as the action was then the essential, and
the consequent or concomitant sound the accident, it would be expected
that a representation, or feigned reproduction of the action, would
have been used to express the idea before the sound associated with
that action could have been separated from it. The visual onomatopœia
of gestures, which even yet have been subjected to but slight
artificial corruption, would therefore serve as a key to the audible.
It is also contended that in the pristine days, when the sounds of
the only words yet formed had close connection with objects and the
ideas directly derived from them, signs were as much more copious for
communication than speech as the sight embraces more and more distinct
characteristics of objects than does the sense of hearing.”[273]
* * * * *
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.”[291]
Cheroki presents thirteen different verbs to signify different kinds
of washing, without any to indicate “washing” itself;[292] and Milligan
says that the aborigines of Tasmania had “no words representing
abstract ideas; for each variety of gum-tree, wattle-tree, &c., they
had a name, but they had no equivalent for the expression of ‘a tree;’
neither could they express abstract qualities, such as hard, soft,
warm, cold, long, short, round.”[293]
Lastly, to give only one other example, Dr. Latham states that a Kurd
of the Zaza tribe, who furnished Dr. Sandwith with a list of native
words, was not “able to conceive a hand or father, except so far as
they were related to himself, or something else; and so essentially
concrete rather than abstract were his notions, that he combined the
pronoun with the substantive whenever he had a part of the human body
or a degree of consanguinity to name,” saying _sere-min_, “my head,”
and _pie-min_, “my father.”
Thus, as Professor Sayce remarks, after alluding to some of the above
facts, “we may be sure that it was not “the ‘ideas of prime importance’
which primitive man struggled to represent, but those individual
objects of which his senses were cognisant.”[294] And, without further
multiplying testimony, we may now be prepared to accept from him the
general statement that, “all over the world, indeed, wherever we come
across a savage race, or an individual who has been unaffected by the
civilization around him, we find this primitive inability to separate
the particular from the universal by isolating the individual word,
and extracting it, as it were, from the ideas habitually associated
with it.”[295] Or, in my own phraseology, among all primitive races
still existing, we meet with what must seem to my opponents a wholly
unintelligible incapacity to evolve a concept from any number of
recepts, notwithstanding that the latter may all be most nearly
related together, and severally named by as many denotative signs:
even with their numberless already-formed words for different kinds
of trees, the aborigines of Tasmania could not designate “a tree.”
Of course they must have had a recept of a tree, or a generic image
formed out of innumerable perceptions of particular trees—so that,
for instance, it would doubtless have surprised a Tasmanian could he
have seen a tree (even though it were a new species for which he had no
name) standing inverted with its roots in the air and its branches in
the ground. In just the same way a dog is surprised when it first sees
a man walking on his hands: the dog will bark at such an object because
it conflicts with the generic image which has been automatically formed
by numberless perceptions of individual men walking on their feet.
But, in the absence of any name for trees in general, there is nothing
to show that the savage has a concept answering to “tree,” any more
than that the dog has a concept answering to “man.” Indeed, unless my
opponents vacate the basis of Nominalism on which their opposition is
founded, they must acknowledge that in the absence of any _name_ for
tree there _can be no conception_ of tree.
So much, then, for what Archdeacon Farrar has called “_the hopeless
poverty of the power of abstraction_” in savages. Their various
languages unite, in verbal testimony, to assure us that human thought
does _not_ “proceed from the abstract to the concrete;” but, on the
contrary, that in the race, as in the individual, receptual ideation is
the precursor of conceptual—denotation the antecedent of denomination,
as in still earlier stages it was itself preceded by gesticulation.
Such being the case with regard to names, it is no wonder, as we
previously found, that low savages are so extraordinarily deficient in
their forms of predication.
* * * * *
The palæontology of human thought, then, as recorded in language,
incontestibly proves that the origin and progress of ideation in
the race was psychologically identical with what we now observe in
the individual. All the stages of ideation which we have seen to be
characteristic of psychogenesis in a child, are thus revealed to us as
having been characteristic of psychogenesis in mankind.
First there was the indicative stage. This is proved in two ways. On
the one hand, all philologists will now agree with Geiger—“But, what
says more than anything, language diminishes the further we look back,
in such a way that we cannot forbear concluding it must once have had
no existence at all.”[296] On the other hand, even if we tap the tree
of language as high up in its stem as the pronominal roots of Sanskrit,
what is the kind of ideational sap which flows therefrom? It is, as we
have already seen, so strongly suggestive of gesture and grimace that
even Professor Max Müller allows that in it we have “remnants of the
earliest and almost pantomimic phase of language, in which language was
hardly as yet what we mean by language, namely _logos_, a gathering,
but only a pointing.”[297]
Secondly, we have clear evidence of sentence-words, as well as of
what I have called the denotative phase, or the naming of simple
recepts—whether only of actions, or, as we may safely assume,
likewise also of objects and qualities; and whether arbitrarily,
or, as seems virtually certain, in chief part by onomatopœia. Both
these subordinate points, however—which are rendered more doubtful
on account of the struggle for existence among words having proved
favourable to denotative terms expressive of actions, and unfavourable
to the survival of onomatopœia—are of comparatively little moment to
us; the important fact is the one which is most clearly testified to by
the philological record, namely, that the lowest strata of this record
yield fossils of the lowest order of development: the “121 concepts,”
appear to be, for the most part, denotations of simple recepts.
Thirdly, higher up in the stratified deposits, we meet with
overwhelming evidence of the connotative extension of these denotative
terms. Indeed, many of these terms have probably undergone a certain
amount of connotative extension as the condition to their having
survived as roots; and, therefore, in these lowest deposits it is
difficult to be sure that an apparently denotative term is not really a
term which has undergone the earlier stages of connotative extension.
If such were the case, we can understand the loss of any onomatopoetic
significance which it may originally have presented. But, however this
may be, there is an endless mass of evidence to prove the subsequent
and continuous growth of connotative extension throughout the whole
range of philological time.
Lastly, as regards the predicative phase, we have seen that philology
shows the same order and method to have been followed in the race as
in the child. In the growing child, as we have seen, pre-conceptual
predication is contemporary with—or occupies the same psychological
level as—the connotative extension of denotative terms. Indeed, the
very act of connotation is in itself an act of predication—if in the
conceptual sphere, of conceptual predication (denomination); if in
the pre-conceptual, of pre-conceptual. Again, in the psychogenesis of
the child we noted how important a part is played in the development
of pre-conceptual predication by the mere apposition of connotative
terms—such apposition being rendered inevitable by the laws of
association. If A is the connotative name for _A_, B the connotative
name for _B_, when the young child sees that _A_ and _B_ occur
together, the statement A B is rendered inevitable by “the logic of
events;” and this statement is a pre-conceptual proposition. Now,
in both these respects philology yields abundant parallels. The
quotations which I have given conclusively prove that “every word
must originally have been a sentence;” or, in my own terminology, a
pre-conceptual proposition of precisely the same kind as that which is
employed by a young child. If it be replied that the young child is
without self-consciousness, while the primitive man was not without
self-consciousness, this would merely be to beg the whole question on
which we are engaged, and, moreover, to beg it in the teeth of every
antecedent probability, as well as of every actual analogy, to which
appeal can possibly be made. If it be true—and who will venture to
doubt it?—that “language diminishes the further we look back, in
such a way that we cannot forbear concluding it must once have had no
existence at all,” will it be maintained that the man-like being who
was then unable to communicate with his fellows by means of any words
at all was gifted with self-consciousness? Should so absurd a statement
be ventured, it would be fatal to the argument of my adversaries; for
the statement would imply, either that concepts may exist without
names, or that self-consciousness may exist without concepts. The
truth of the matter is that philology has proved, in a singularly
complete manner, the origin and gradual development in time, first of
pre-conceptual communication, and next of the self-consciousness which
supplied the basis of conceptual predication. No wonder, therefore,
as Professor Max Müller somewhat naively observes, “it may be said
that the first step in the formation of names and concepts is very
imperfect. So it is.” Truly “to name the act of carrying by a root
formed from sounds which accompany the act of carrying a heavy load,
is a far more primitive act than to fix an attribute by a name”
conceptually applied. So primitive, indeed, is nomination of this
kind, that I defy any one to show wherein it differs psychologically
from what I have called the denotation of a young child, or even of a
talking bird.
And, having reduced the matter to this issue so far as the results of
philology are concerned, I may fitly conclude by briefly indicating
the principal point which appears to divide my opinions from those
of the eminent philologist just alluded to—if not also from those
of the majority of my psychological opponents. Briefly, the point is
that on the other side an unwarrantable assumption is made—to wit,
that conceptual thought is an antecedent condition, _sine quâ non_, to
any and every act of bestowing a name; and, _a fortiori_, to any and
every act of predication. This is the fundamental assumption, which,
whether openly expressed or covertly implied, serves as the basis of
the whole superstructure of my opponents’ argument. Now, I claim to
have shown, by a complete inductive proof, that this assumption is not
only unwarrantable in theory, but false in fact. There are names and
names. Not every name that is bestowed betokens conceptual thought on
the part of the namer. Alike from the case of the talking bird, of the
young child, and of early man (so far as he has left any traces of his
psychology in the structure of language), I have demonstrated that
prior to the stage of denomination there are the stages of indication,
denotation, and receptual connotation. These are the psychological
stepping-stones across that “Rubicon of Mind,” which, owing to their
neglect, has seemed to be impassable. The Concept (and, _a fortiori_,
the Proposition) is not a structure of ideation which is presented to
us without a developmental history. Although it has been uniformly
assumed by all my opponents “that the simplest element of thought” can
have had no such history, the assumption is, as I have said, directly
contradicted by observable fact. Had the case been otherwise—had
the concept really been without father and without mother, without
beginning of days or end of life—then truly a case might have been
shown for regarding it as an entity _sui generis_, destitute of kith
or kin among all the other faculties of mind. But, as we have now so
fully seen, no such unique exception to the otherwise uniform process
of evolution can here be maintained: the phases of development which
have gradually led up to conceptual thought admit of being as clearly
traced as those which have led to any other product, whether of life or
of mind.
Here, then, I bring to a close this brief and imperfect rendering of
the “Witness of Philology.” But, brief and imperfect as the rendering
is, I am honestly unable to see how it is conceivable that the witness
itself could have been more uniform as to its testimony, or more
multifarious as to its facts—more consistent, more complete, or more
altogether overwhelming than we have found it to be. In almost every
single respect it has corroborated the results of our psychological
analysis. It has come forward like a living thing, which, in the very
voice of Language itself, directly and circumstantially narrates to
us the actual history of a process the constituent phases of which we
had previously inferred. It has told us of a time when as yet mankind
were altogether speechless, and able to communicate with one another
only by means of gesticulation and grimace. It has described to us
the first articulate sounds in the form of sentence-words, without
significance apart from the pointings by which they were accompanied.
It has revealed the gradual differentiation of such a protoplasmic form
of language into “parts of speech;” 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.