processes by which grammatical structure and inflections took their rise,
appear in a great measure needless, after the matter has been placed in
this light. The mental powers could readily connect particular arbitrary
sounds with particular ideas, whether those ideas were nouns, verbs, or
interjections. As the words of all languages can be traced back into
roots which are monosyllables, we may presume these sounds to have all
been monosyllabic accordingly. The clustering of two or more together to
express a compound idea, and the formation of inflections by additional
syllables expressive of pronouns and such prepositions as of, by, and to,
are processes which would or might occur as matters of course, being
simple results of a mental power called into action, and partly directed,
by external necessities. This power, however, as we find it in very
different degrees of endowment in individuals, so would it be in
different degrees of endowment in nations, or branches of the human
family. Hence we find the formation of words and the process of their
composition and grammatical arrangement, in very different stages of
development in different races. The Chinese have a language composed of
a limited number of monosyllables, which they multiply in use by mere
variations of accent, and which they have never yet attained the power of
clustering or inflecting; the language of this immense nation—the third
part of the human race—may be said to be in the condition of infancy.
The aboriginal Americans, so inferior in civilization, have, on the other
hand, a language of the most elaborately composite kind, perhaps even
exceeding, in this respect, the languages of the most refined European
nations. These are but a few out of many facts tending to shew that
language is in a great measure independent of civilization, as far as its
advance and development are concerned. Do they not also help to prove
that cultivated intellect is not necessary for the origination of
language?
Facts daily presented to our observation afford equally simple reasons
for the almost infinite diversification of language. It is invariably
found that, wherever society is at once dense and refined, language tends
to be uniform throughout the whole population, and to undergo few changes
in the course of time. Wherever, on the contrary, we have a scattered
and barbarous people, we have great diversities, and comparatively rapid
alterations of language. Insomuch that, while English, French, and
German are each spoken with little variation by many millions, there are
islands in the Indian archipelago, probably not inhabited by one million,
but in which there are hundreds of languages, as diverse as are English,
French, and German. It is easy to see how this should be. There are
peculiarities in the vocal organization of every person, tending to
produce peculiarities of pronunciation; for example, it has been stated
that each child in a family of six gave the monosyllable, fly, in a
different manner, (eye, fy, ly, &c.) until, when the organs were more
advanced, correct example induced the proper pronunciation of this and
similar words. Such departures from orthoepy are only to be checked by
the power of such example; but this is a power not always present, or not
always of sufficient strength. The able and self-devoted Robert Moffat,
in his work on South Africa, states, without the least regard to
hypothesis, that amongst the people of the towns of that great region,
“the purity and harmony of language is kept up by their pitchos or public
meetings, by their festivals and ceremonies, as well as by their songs
and their constant intercourse. With the isolated villages of the desert
it is far otherwise. They have no such meetings; they are compelled to
traverse the wilds, often to a great distance from their native village.
On such occasions, fathers and mothers, and all who can bear a burden,
often set out for weeks at a time, and leave their children to the care
of two or three infirm old people. The infant progeny, some of whom are
beginning to lisp, while others can just master a whole sentence, and
those still farther advanced, romping and playing together, the children
of nature, through the live-long day, _become habituated to a language of
their own_. The more voluble condescend to the less precocious, and
thus, from this infant Babel, proceeds a dialect composed of a host of
mongrel words and phrases, joined together without rule, and _in the
course of a generation the entire character of the language is changed_.”
{317} I have been told, that in like manner the children of the
Manchester factory workers, left for a great part of the day, in large
assemblages, under the care of perhaps a single elderly person, and
spending the time in amusements, are found to make a great deal of new
language. I have seen children in other circumstances amuse themselves
by concocting and throwing into the family circulation entirely new
words; and I believe I am running little risk of contradiction when I say
that there is scarcely a family, even amongst the middle classes of this
country, who have not some peculiarities of pronunciation and syntax,
which have originated amongst themselves, it is hardly possible to say
how. All these things being considered, it is easy to understand how
mankind have come at length to possess between three and four thousand
languages, all different at least as much as French, German, and English,
though, as has been shewn, the traces of a common origin are observable
in them all.
What has been said on the question whether mankind were originally
barbarous or civilized, will have prepared the reader for understanding
how the arts and sciences, and the rudiments of civilization itself, took
their rise amongst men. The only source of fallacious views on this
subject is the so frequent observation of arts, sciences, and social
modes, forms, and ideas, being not indigenous where we see them now
flourishing, but known to have been derived elsewhere: thus Rome borrowed
from Greece, Greece from Egypt, and Egypt itself, lost in the mists of
historic antiquity, is now supposed to have obtained the light of
knowledge from some still earlier scene of intellectual culture. This
has caused to many a great difficulty in supposing a natural or
spontaneous origin for civilization and the attendant arts. But, in the
first place, several stages of derivation are no conclusive argument
against there having been an originality at some earlier stage. In the
second, such observers have not looked far enough, for, if they had, they
could have seen various instances of civilizations which it is
impossible, with any plausibility, to trace back to a common origin with
others; such are those of China and America. They would also have seen
civilization springing up, as it were, like oases amongst the arid plains
of barbarism, as in the case of the Mandans. A still more attentive
study of the subject would have shewn, amongst living men, the very
psychological procedure on which the origination of civilization and the
arts and sciences depended.
These things, like language, are simply the effects of the spontaneous
working of certain mental faculties, each in relation to the things of
the external world on which it was intended by creative Providence to be
exercised. The monkeys themselves, without instruction from any quarter,
learn to use sticks in fighting, and some build houses—an act which
cannot in their case be considered as one of instinct, but of
intelligence. Such being the case, there is no necessary difficulty in
supposing how man, with his superior mental organization, (a brain five
times heavier,) was able, in his primitive state, without instruction, to
turn many things in nature to his use, and commence, in short, the circle
of the domestic arts. He appears, in the most unfavourable
circumstances, to be able to provide himself with some sort of dwelling,
to make weapons, and to practise some simple kind of cookery. But,
granting, it will be said, that he can go thus far, how does he ever
proceed farther unprompted, seeing that many nations remain fixed for
ever at this point, and seem unable to take one step in advance? It is
perfectly true that there is such a fixation in many nations; but, on the
other hand, all nations are not alike in mental organization, and another
point has been established, that only when some favourable circumstances
have settled a people in one place, do arts and social arrangements get
leave to flourish. If we were to limit our view to humbly endowed
nations, or the common class of minds in those called civilized, we
should see absolutely no conceivable power for the origination of new
ideas and devices. But let us look at the inventive class of minds which
stand out amongst their fellows—the men who, with little prompting or
none, conceive new ideas in science, arts, morals—and we can be at no
loss to understand how and whence have arisen the elements of that
civilization which history traces from country to country throughout the
course of centuries. See a Pascal, reproducing the Alexandrian’s
problems at fifteen; a Ferguson, making clocks from the suggestions of
his own brain, while tending cattle on a Morayshire heath; a boy
Lawrence, in an inn on the Bath road, producing, without a master,
drawings which the educated could not but admire; or look at Solon and
Confucius, devising sage laws, and breathing the accents of all but
divine wisdom, for their barbarous fellow-countrymen, three thousand
years ago—and the whole mystery is solved at once. Amongst the
arrangements of Providence is one for the production of original,
inventive, and aspiring minds, which, when circumstances are not
decidedly unfavourable, strike out new ideas for the benefit of their
fellow-creatures, or put upon them a lasting impress of their own
superior sentiments. Nations, improved by these means, become in turn
_foci_ for the diffusion of light over the adjacent regions of
barbarism—their very passions helping to this end, for nothing can be
more clear than that ambitious aggression has led to the civilization of
many countries. Such is the process which seems to form the destined
means for bringing mankind from the darkness of barbarism to the day of
knowledge and mechanical and social improvement. Even the noble art of
letters is but, as Dr. Adam Fergusson has remarked, “a natural produce of
the human mind, which will rise spontaneously, wherever men are happily
placed;” original alike amongst the ancient Egyptians and the dimly
monumented Toltecans of Yucatan. “Banish,” says Dr. Gall, “music,
poetry, painting, sculpture, architecture, all the arts and sciences, and
let your Homers, Raphaels, Michael Angelos, Glucks, and Canovas, be
forgotten, yet let men of genius of every description spring up, and
poetry, music, painting, architecture, sculpture, and all the arts and
sciences will again shine out in all their glory. Twice within the
records of history has the human race traversed the great circle of its
entire destiny, and twice has the rudeness of barbarism been followed by
a higher degree of refinement. It is a great mistake to suppose one
people to have proceeded from another on account of their conformity of
manners, customs, and arts. The swallow of Paris builds its nest like
the swallow of Vienna, but does it thence follow that the former sprung
from the latter? With the same causes we have the same effects; with the
same organization we have the manifestation of the same powers.”
MENTAL CONSTITUTION OF ANIMALS.
IT has been one of the most agreeable tasks of modern science to trace
the wonderfully exact adaptations of the organization of animals to the
physical circumstances amidst which they are destined to live. From the
mandibles of insects to the hand of man, all is seen to be in the most
harmonious relation to the things of the outward world, thus clearly
proving that _design_ presided in the creation of the whole—design again
implying a designer, another word for a CREATOR.
It would be tiresome to present in this place even a selection of the
proofs which have been adduced on this point. The Natural Theology of
Paley, and the Bridgewater Treatises, place the subject in so clear a
light, that the general postulate may be taken for granted. The physical
constitution of animals is, then, to be regarded as in the nicest
congruity and adaptation to the external world.
Less clear ideas have hitherto been entertained on the mental
constitution of animals. The very nature of this constitution is not as
yet generally known or held as ascertained. There is, indeed, a notion
of old standing, that the mind is in some way connected with the brain;
but the metaphysicians insist that it is, in reality, known only by its
acts or effects, and they accordingly present the subject in a form which
is unlike any other kind of science, for it does not so much as pretend
to have nature for its basis. There is a general disinclination to
regard mind in connexion with organization, from a fear that this must
needs interfere with the cherished religious doctrine of the spirit of
man, and lower him to the level of the brutes. A distinction is
therefore drawn between our mental manifestations and those of the lower
animals, the latter being comprehended under the term instinct, while
ours are collectively described as mind, mind being again a received
synonyme with soul, the immortal part of man. There is here a strange
system of confusion and error, which it is most imprudent to regard as
essential to religion, since candid investigations of nature tend to shew
its untenableness. There is, in reality, nothing to prevent our
regarding man as specially endowed with an immortal spirit, at the same
time that his ordinary mental manifestations are looked upon as simple
phenomena resulting from organization, those of the lower animals being
phenomena absolutely the same in character, though developed within much
narrower limits. {326}
What has chiefly tended to take mind, in the eyes of learned and
unlearned, out of the range of nature, is its apparently irregular and
wayward character. How different the manifestations in different beings!
how unstable in all!—at one time so calm, at another so wild and
impulsive! It seemed impossible that anything so subtle and aberrant
could be part of a system, the main features of which are regularity and
precision. But the irregularity of mental phenomena is only in
appearance. When we give up the individual, and take the mass, we find
as much uniformity of result as in any other class of natural phenomena.
The irregularity is exactly of the same kind as that of the weather. No
man can say what may be the weather of to-morrow; but the quantity of
rain which falls in any particular place in any five years, is precisely
the same as the quantity which falls in any other five years at the same
place. Thus, while it is absolutely impossible to predict of any one
Frenchman that during next year he will commit a crime, it is quite
certain that about one in every six hundred and fifty of the French
people will do so, because in past years the proportion has generally
been about that amount, the tendencies to crime in relation to the
temptations being everywhere invariable over a sufficiently wide range of
time. So also, the number of persons taken in charge by the police in
London for being drunk and disorderly on the streets, is, week by week, a
nearly uniform quantity, shewing that the inclination to drink to excess
is always in the mass about the same, regard being had to the existing
temptations or stimulations to this vice. Even mistakes and oversights
are of regular recurrence, for it is found in the post-offices of large
cities, that the number of letters put in without addresses is year by
year the same. Statistics has made out an equally distinct regularity in
a wide range, with regard to many other things concerning the mind, and
the doctrine founded upon it has lately produced a scheme which may well
strike the ignorant with surprise. It was proposed to establish in
London a society for ensuring the integrity of clerks, secretaries,
collectors, and all such functionaries as are usually obliged to find
security for money passing through their hands in the course of business.
A gentleman of the highest character as an actuary spoke of the plan in
the following terms:—“If a thousand bankers’ clerks were to club together
to indemnify their securities, by the payment of one pound a year each,
and if each had given security for 500_l._, it is obvious that two in
each year might become defaulters to that amount, four to half the
amount, and so on, without rendering the guarantee fund insolvent. If it
be tolerably well ascertained that the instances of dishonesty (yearly)
among such persons amount to one in five hundred, this club would
continue to exist, subject to being in debt in a bad year, to an amount
which it would be able to discharge in good ones. The only question
necessary to be asked previous to the formation of such a club would
be,—may it not be feared that the motive to resist dishonesty would be
lessened by the existence of the club, or that ready-made rogues, by
belonging to it, might find the means of obtaining situations which they
would otherwise have been kept out of by the impossibility of obtaining
security among those who know them? Suppose this be sufficiently
answered by saying, that none but those who could bring satisfactory
testimony to their previous good character should be allowed to join the
club; that persons who may now hope that a deficiency on their parts will
be made up and hushed up by the relative or friend who is security, will
know very well that the club will have no motive to decline a
prosecution, or to keep the secret, and so on. It then only remains to
ask, whether the sum demanded for the guarantee is sufficient?” {331}
The philosophical principle on which the scheme proceeds, seems to be
simply this, that, amongst a given (large) number of persons of good
character, there will be, within a year or other considerable space of
time, a determinate number of instances in which moral principle and the
terror of the consequences of guilt will be overcome by temptations of a
determinate kind and amount, and thus occasion a certain periodical
amount of loss which the association must make up.
This statistical regularity in moral affairs fully establishes their
being under the presidency of law. Man is now seen to be an enigma only
as an individual; in the mass he is a mathematical problem. It is hardly
necessary to say, much less to argue, that mental action, being proved to
be under law, passes at once into the category of natural things. Its
old metaphysical character vanishes in a moment, and the distinction
usually taken between physical and moral is annulled, as only an error in
terms. This view agrees with what all observation teaches, that mental
phenomena flow directly from the brain. They are seen to be dependent on
naturally constituted and naturally conditioned organs, and thus
obedient, like all other organic phenomena, to law. And how wondrous
must the constitution of this apparatus be, which gives us consciousness
of thought and of affection, which makes us familiar with the numberless
things of earth, and enables us to rise in conception and communion to
the councils of God himself! It is matter which forms the medium or
instrument—a little mass which, decomposed, is but so much common dust;
yet in its living constitution, designed, formed, and sustained by
Almighty Wisdom, how admirable its character! how reflective of the
unutterable depths of that Power by which it was so formed, and is so
sustained!
In the mundane economy, mental action takes its place as a means of
providing for the independent existence and the various relations of
animals, each species being furnished according to its special
necessities and the demands of its various relations. The nervous
system—the more comprehensive term for its organic apparatus—is variously
developed in different classes and species, and also in different
individuals, the volume or mass bearing a general relation to the amount
of power. In the mollusca and crustacea we see simply a ganglionic cord
pervading the extent of the body, and sending out lateral filaments. In
the vertebrata, we find a brain with a spinal cord, and branching lines
of nervous tissue. {333} But here, as in the general structure of
animals, the great principle of unity is observed. The brain of the
vertebrata is merely an expansion of one of the ganglions of the nervous
cord of the mollusca and crustacea. Or the corresponding ganglion of the
mollusca and crustacea may be regarded as the rudiment of a brain; the
superior organ thus appearing as only a farther development of the
inferior. There are many facts which tend to prove that the action of
this apparatus is of an electric nature, a modification of that
surprising agent, which takes magnetism, heat, and light, as other
subordinate forms, and of whose general scope in this great system of
things we are only beginning to have a right conception. It has been
found that simple electricity, artificially produced, and sent along the
nerves of a dead body, excites muscular action. The brain of a
newly-killed animal being taken out, and replaced by a substance which
produces electric action, the operation of digestion, which had been
interrupted by the death of the animal, was resumed, shewing the absolute
identity of the brain with a galvanic battery. Nor is this a very
startling idea, when we reflect that electricity is almost as
metaphysical as ever mind was supposed to be. It is a thing perfectly
intangible, weightless. Metal may be magnetized, or heated to seven
hundred of Fahrenheit, without becoming the hundredth part of a grain
heavier. And yet electricity is a real thing, an actual existence in
nature, as witness the effects of heat and light in vegetation—the power
of the galvanic current to re-assemble the particles of copper from a
solution, and make them again into a solid plate—the rending force of the
thunderbolt as it strikes the oak; see also how both heat and light
observe the angle of incidence in reflection, as exactly as does the
grossest stone thrown obliquely against a wall. So mental action may be
imponderable, intangible, and yet a real existence, and ruled by the
Eternal through his laws. {335}