constitutes what we have called the palæontology of mind. By this term we
mean the study of human minds of the past as we may know them through the
many varied relics and documents which indicate their characters. It is
only too obvious to every one that human knowledge has advanced in the
course of time and that every department of human thought and mental
activity has participated in this progress. No one would have the temerity
to assert that we know nothing more than our ancestors of 5000 or even
1000 years ago. Our common-sense teaches us even before the man of science
produces the full body of evidence at his disposal that human faculties
have evolved. With regard to reasoning powers, which form one of the four
distinguishing characteristics of the human species as contrasted with
other animals, the case has already been reviewed, and we now turn to
speech and language and other departments of human mentality. When we
compare the attainments of present day men with the abilities and ideas of
their ancestors we will do for mental phenomena precisely what was done
when we compared the skeletons of modern animals with those of creatures
belonging to bygone geological ages; in this reason is found the
justification for the phrase employed in the present connection.
Written history furnishes a wealth of material for interpreting the mental
conditions of ancient peoples, but beside documentary evidence the
anthropologist learns to use inscriptions of prehistoric times, the
primitive graphic representations on tombs and monuments, and even the
characteristics of crude implements like axes and arrow-heads. The layman
finds it difficult at first to regard such relics as indications of the
mental stature of the people who made and possessed them; but a little
thought will show that a man who used a rough stone ax in the time of the
ancient Celts could not possibly have had a mind which included the
conception of a finished iron tool or modern mechanism. So in all
departments of human culture, the evolution of material objects may be
justly employed in interpreting and estimating the mental abilities of
ancient peoples.
Language is undoubtedly the most important single intellectual possession
of mankind, for it constitutes, as it were, the very framework of social
organization. Without a ready means of communication the myriad human
units who perform the varied tasks necessary for the economic well-being
of a body-politic would be unable to coordinate their manifold activities
with success, and the structure of civilized societies at least would
collapse. It needs no legend of a Tower of Babel to make this plain. So
fundamental is this truth that although we may not have recognized it
explicitly, we unconsciously form the belief that speech and language are
exclusive properties of the human species, and even more characteristic of
man alone than the power of reason itself. While organized language is
clearly something that as such we do not share with the lower animals,
nevertheless we cannot regard the communication of ideas or states of
feeling by sound as an exclusive property of mankind. All are familiar
with the difference between the whine and the bark of a dog and with the
widely different feelings that are expressed by these contrasted sounds.
And we know too that dogs can understand what many of their master's words
signify, as when a shepherd gives directions to his collie. We could even
go further down in the scale and find in the shrill chirping of the
katydid at the mating season a still more elementary combination of
significant instinctive sound elements. To the comparative student the
speech of man differs from these lower modes of communication only in its
greater complexity, and in its employment of more numerous and varied
sounds,--in a word, only in the higher degree of its evolution. And it is
even more evident that the diverse forms of speech employed by various
races have gradually grown to be what they now are.
At the outset it is well to distinguish between writing, as the
conventional mode of symbolizing words, and spoken language itself; the
two have been more independent in their evolution than we may be wont to
believe. Speech came first in historical development, just as a child now
learns to talk before it can understand and use printed or written
letters. Furthermore, many races still exist who have a well-developed
form of language without any concrete way of recording it. It is true, of
course, that back of the conventions of speech and writing are the ideas
themselves that find expression in the one way or the other, or even by
the still more primitive use of signs and gestures. But it is not with
these ultimate elements of thought that we are now concerned; our task is
to learn, first, what evidences are discoverable which show that the
property of human language in general has originated by evolution, and
then, in the second place, to perceive how this development proves an
evolution of one group of ultimate ideas, namely, human concepts of the
modal value of words and symbols as expressions of ideas themselves.
A simple common-sense treatment of obvious facts will greatly facilitate
our progress. We know very well that the English we speak to-day differs
in many ways from the language of Elizabethan times, and that the former
is a direct descendant of the other. The latter, in turn, was a product of
Norman French and Anglo-Saxon,--a combination of certain elements of both,
but identical with neither of its immediate parents. The Saxon tongue
itself has a history that leads back to King Alfred's time and earlier.
Thus we are already aware of the fact that our speech has truly evolved,
like the physical structure of the men who employ it; and we know, too,
how readily new words are adopted into current English, like _tabu_ from
Polynesia, or _garage_ from the French, showing that language is even now
in process of evolution.
The sounds that make up spoken words can be resolved into a single element
with its modifications; this basic element is the brute-like call or shout
made with the mouth and throat opened wide--a sound we may have heard
uttered by men under the stress of pain or terror. All of the various
vowels are simply modifications of this element by altering the shape of
the mouth cavity and orifice, while the consonants are produced by
interrupting the sound-waves with the palate or lips or tongue. Like the
cell as a unit of structure throughout the organic world, this elemental
utterance proves to be the basic unit of all human languages, which vary
so widely among races of to-day no less than they have in the history of
any single people.
One of the first steps in the making of spoken words was taken by human
beings when they imitated the calls or other sounds produced by living
things, and tacitly agreed to recognize the imitation as a symbol of the
creature making it. Thus the names for the cuckoo and the crow in many
languages besides our own are simply copies of the calls uttered by these
birds; a Tahitian calls a cat _mimi_; the name for a snake almost
invariably includes the hissing attributed to that creature. After a time
words which were at first simply imitations and which referred only to the
things that made these sounds came to refer to certain qualities of the
things imitated, so that the naming of other than natural objects, such as
qualities, began, leading ultimately to the use of words for qualities
belonging to many and different objects in the way of abstractions.
Much light upon the evolution of language is obtained when we treat the
speech of various races as we did the skeletal structures of cats and
seals and whales. When we compare the Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and
French languages, they reveal the same general structure in thousands of
their words,--a common basis which in these cases is due to their
derivation from the same ancestor, the Latin tongue. The Latin word for
star is _stella_, and the Italian word of to-day is an identical and
unchanged descendant, like a persistent type of shark which lives now in
practically the same form as did its ancestor in the coal ages. The
Spanish word is _estrella_, a modified derivative, but still one that
bears in its structure the marks of its Latin origin; the French word
_étoile_ is a still more altered product of word evolution. Even in the
German _stern_, Norse _stjern_, Danish _starn_, and English _star_ we may
recognize mutual affinities and common ancestral structure. Choosing
illustrations from a different group, the Hebrew salutation "Peace be with
you," _Shalom lachem_, proves to be a blood cousin of the Arabic _Salaam
alaikum_, indicating the common ancestry of these diverse languages. Among
Polynesian peoples the Tahitian calls a house a _fare_, the Maori of New
Zealand uses _whare_, while the Hawaiian employs the word _hale_, and the
Samoan, _fale_. Whenever we classify and compare human languages, we find
similar consistent anatomical evidences of their relationships and
evolution. We can even discern counterparts of the vestigial structures
like the rudimentary limbs of whales. In the English word _night_ certain
letters do not function vocally, though in the German counterpart _Nacht_
their correspondents still play a part. In the word _dough_ as correctly
pronounced the final letters are similarly vestigial, although in the
phonetic relative _tough_ they are still sounded.
The evolution of the art of writing appears with equal clearness when we
compare the texts of modern peoples with inscriptions found on ancient
temples and monuments and tablets. Even races of the present day employ
methods of communicating ideas by writing symbols that are counterparts of
the earliest stages in the historic development of writing. An Eskimo
describes the events of a journey by a series of little pictures
representing himself in the act of doing various things. A simple outline
of a man with one arm pointing to the body and the other pointing away
indicates "I go." A circle denotes the island to which he goes. He sleeps
there one night, and he tells this by drawing a figure with one hand over
the eyes, indicating sleep, while the other hand has one finger upraised
to specify a single night. The next day he goes further and he employs the
first figure again. A second island is indicated, in this case with a dot
in the center of the circle to show a house in which he sleeps two nights,
as his figure with closed eyes and two fingers uplifted shows. He hunts
the walrus, an outline of which is given alongside of his figure waving a
spear in one hand; likewise he hunts with a bow and arrow, which is
demonstrated by the same method. A rude drawing representing a boat with
two upright lines for himself and another man with paddles in their hands
gives a further account of his journey, and the final figure is the circle
denoting the original island to which he returns.
Pictography, as this method of communicating ideas is called, is often
highly developed among the American Indians. For example, a petition from
a tribe of Chippewa Indians to the President of the United States asking
for the possession of certain lakes near their reservation is a series of
pictures of the sacred animals or "totems" which represent the several
subtribes. Lines run from the hearts of the totem animals to the heart of
the chief totem, while similar lines run from the eyes of the subsidiary
totems to the eyes of the chief, and these indicate that all of the
subtribes feel the same way about the matter and view it alike,--the
sentiment is unanimous. From the chief totem run out two lines, one going
to the picture of the desired object, while the other goes to the
President, conveying the petition. Thus pictography, a method of writing
that belongs to the childhood of races, may be made to communicate ideas
of a strikingly complex nature.
The ancient and modern inscriptions of Asia, from the Red Sea to China,
present many significant stages in the development of picture-writing. In
earliest ages the men of Asia made actual drawings of particular objects,
such as the sun, trees, and human figures; subsequently these became
conventionalized to a certain degree, but even as late as 3000 B.C. the
Akkadian script was still largely pictographic. From it originated the
knife-point writing of Babylonian and Chaldean clay tablets, while among
the peoples of Eastern Asia, who continued to draw their symbols, the
transition to conventionalized pictures such as those made by the Chinaman
was slower and less drastic.
In another line of evolution, the hieroglyphics of Egyptian tombs and
monuments illustrate a most interesting intermediate condition of
development. These inscriptions have been deciphered only since the
discovery of the famous Rosetta stone-fragment, which bears portions of
three identical texts written in hieroglyphics, in Greek, and in another
series of symbols. The Egyptian used more or less formalized characters to
represent certain sounds, while in addition to the group of such
characters combined to make a word, the scribe drew a supplementary
picture of the thing or act signified. For instance, _xeftu_ means
enemies, but the Egyptian graver added a picture of a kneeling bowman to
avoid any possible misapprehension as to his meaning. The symbols denoting
"to walk" are followed by a pair of legs; the setting sun is described not
only by a word but also by its outline as it lies on the horizon. Here
again one is struck by the similarity between a stage in the historic
development of racial characteristics and a method employed at the present
time to teach the immature minds of children that certain letters
represent a particular object; in a kindergarten primer the sentence "see
the rat and the cat" is accompanied by pictures of the animals specified,
in true hieroglyphic simplicity.
Just as the child's mind develops so that the aid of the picture can be
dispensed with, and the symbolic characters can be used in increasingly
complex ways, in like manner the minds of men living in successive
centuries have evolved. While an evolution of human conceptual processes
in general is not necessarily implied by the evolution of the forms of
written language, the former process is in part demonstrated by the latter
in so far as the change from the writing of pictures to the use of
conventional symbols involves an advance in human ideas of the
interpretation and value of the symbols in question. A man of ancient
times drew a tree to represent his conception of this object; in the
writing of English we now use four letters to stand for the same object,
and none of these symbols is in any way a replica of the tree. It is
certainly obvious that some change in the mental association of symbol and
object has been brought about, and to this extent there has been mental
evolution.
* * * * *
Passing now to other departments of human culture, we must deal in the
next place with the basic "arts of life"; that is, the modes of conducting
the necessary activities of every day. All men of all times, be they
civilized or savage, are impelled like the brutes by their biological
nature to seek food and to repel their foes. The rough stone club and ax
were fashioned by the first savage men, when diminishing physical prowess
placed them at a disadvantage in the competition with stronger animals.
Smoother and more efficient weapons were made by the hordes of their more
advanced descendants, some of whom remained in the mental and cultural
condition of the stone age like the Fuegian, until the white travelers of
recent centuries brought them newer ideas and implements. In Europe and
elsewhere the period of stone gave place to the bronze and iron ages, and
throughout the changing years human inventiveness improved the missile and
weapon to become the bow and arrow of medieval civilization and recent
African savagery. The artillery and shells of modern warfare are their
still more highly evolved descendants.
So it is with the dwellings of men, and the significance of the changes
displayed by such things. The cave was a natural shelter for primitive man
as well as for the wolf, and it is still used by men to-day. Where it did
not exist, a leafy screen of branches served in its stead; even now there
are human beings, like the African pygmy and the Indian of Brazil, who are
little beyond the orang-outang as regards the character of the shelter
they construct out of vegetation. From such crude beginnings, on a par
with the lairs and nests of lower animals, have evolved the grass huts of
the Zulu, the bamboo dwelling of the Malay, the igloo of the Arctic
tribes, and the mud house of the desert Indians. The modern palace and
apartment are merely more complex and more elaborate in material and
architectural plan, when compared with their primitive antecedents.
Baskets, clay vessels, and other household articles testify in the same
way to an evolution of the mental views of the people making them. The
means of transportation are even more demonstrative. The wagon of the
early Briton was like a rough ox-cart of the present day, evolved from the
simple sledge as a beginning. In its turn it has served as a prototype for
all the conveyances on wheels such as the stage-coach and the modern
Pullman. The history of locomotives, employed in the first chapter to
develop a clear conception of what evolution means, takes its place here
as a demonstration of the way human ideas about traction have themselves
evolved so as to render the construction of such mechanisms possible.
The primitive savage swimming in the sea found that a floating log
supported his weight as he rested from his efforts. By the strokes of his
arms or of a club in his hand, he could propel this log in a desired
direction; thus the dugout canoe arose, to be steadied by the outrigger as
the savage enlarged his experience. A cloth held aloft aided his progress
down or across the wind, and it became an integral element of the sailing
craft, which evolved through the stages of the galley and caravel to the
schooner and frigate of modern times. When the steam-engine was invented
and incorporated in the boat, a new line of evolution was initiated,
leading from the "Clermont" to the "Lusitania" and the battleship.
The history of clothing begins with the employment of an animal's hide or
a branch of leaves to protect the body from the sun's heat or the cold
winds. Other early beginnings of the more elaborate decorative clothing
are discerned by anthropologists in the scars made upon the arms and
breast as in the case of the Australian black man, and in the figured
patterns of tattooing, so remarkably developed by the natives in the
islands of the South Pacific Ocean. A visit to a gallery of ancient and
medieval paintings clearly shows that the conventional modes of clothing
the human body have changed from century to century, while it is equally
plain that they alter even from year to year of the present time,
according to the vagaries of fashion.
A brief review of the "arts of pleasure," including music and sculpture
and painting, demonstrates their evolution also. The earliest cavemen of
Europe left crude drawings of reindeer and bears and wild oxen scratched
upon bits of ivory or upon the stone walls of their shelters; the painting
and sculpture of early historic Europe were more advanced, but they were
far from being what Greece and Rome produced in later centuries. Indeed,
the evolution of Greek sculpture carried this higher art to a point that
is generally conceded to be far beyond that attained by even our modern
sculptors, just as flying reptiles of the Chalk Age developed wings and
learned to fly long before birds and bats came into existence.
In the field of music, the earliest stages can be surmised only by a study
of the actual songs and instruments of primitive peoples now living in
wild places. No doubt the song began as a recitation by a savage of the
events of a battle or a journey in which he had participated. In giving
such a description he lives his battles again, and his simulated moods and
passions alter his voice so that the spoken history becomes a chant. From
this to the choral and oratorio is not very far.
Musical instruments seem to have had a multiple origin. The ram's horn of
the early Briton and the perforated conch-shell of the South Sea Islander
are natural trumpets; when they were copied in brass and other metals they
evolved rapidly to become the varied wind instruments typified to-day by
the cornet and the tuba. In the same way the reed of the Greek shepherd is
the ancestor of the flute and clarionet. Stringed instruments like the
guitar, zither, and violin form another class which begins with the bow
and its twanging string. The power of the note was intensified by holding
a gourd against the bow to serve as a resonance-chamber. When the musician
of early times enlarged this chamber, moved it to the end of the bow, and
multiplied the strings, he constructed the cithara of antiquity,--the
ancestor of a host of modern types, from the harp to the bass-viol and
mandolin.
The dance and the drama find their beginnings in the simple reënactment of
an actual series of events. Among Polynesians of to-day the dances still
retain the rhythmic beat of the war-tread measure, and many of the motions
of the arms are more or less conventionalized imitations of the act of
striking with a club, or hurling a spear, and other acts. To such elements
many other things have been added, but the fact remains that our own
formal dances, as well as the sun-dance of the Indian and the mad whirl of
the Dervish, are modern products which have truly evolved.
* * * * *
When we turn to science and philosophy and other intellectual attainments
of modern civilized peoples, it is easier to see how evolution has been
accomplished, because we possess a wealth of written literature which
explains the way that human ideas have changed from century to century. In
these cases there can be no question that such evidences provide accurate
instruments for estimating the mental abilities of the writers who
produced them. We shall take up the higher conceptions of mankind at a
later juncture, so at this point we need only to note that even these
mental possessions, like household culture and even the physical
structures of a human body, have changed and differentiated to become the
widely different interpretations of the world and supernature that are
held by the civilized, barbarous, and savage races of to-day.
As we look back over the facts that have been cited, and as we contemplate
the large departments of knowledge about human psychology, mental
development, and racial culture which these few details illustrate, we
come to realize how securely founded is the doctrine that even the human
mind with all its varied powers has grown to be what it is. Indeed, it is
solely due to his mental prowess that man has attained a position above
that of any lower animal. And yet every human organ and its function can
be traced to something in the lower world; it is a difference only in
degree and not in category that science discovers. The line connecting
civilized man with the savage leads inevitably through the ape to the
lower mammalia possessing intelligence, and on down to the reflex organic
mechanisms which end with the _Amoeba_. It is a long distance from the
mechanical activities of the protozoön to the processes of human thought;
yet the physical basis of the latter is a cellular mechanism and nothing
more, developed during a single human life in company with all other
organs from a one-celled starting-point--the human egg.
* * * * *
The method by which mental evolution has been accomplished is likewise
demonstrable, because the factors are identical with those which bring
about specific transformation in physical respects. This is to be
expected, for the contention that the structures and the functions of the
several organs constituting any system are inseparable has never been
gainsaid.
Mental variation is real. It needs no scientist to tell us that human
beings differ in intellectual qualifications and attainments, and that no
two people are exactly similar even though they may be brothers or
sisters. The struggle for existence or competition on the basis of mental
ability is equally real, and every day we see the prize awarded to the
more fit, while those who lose are crowded ever closer to the wall. As in
all other fields of endeavor, the goal of success can be attained only by
adaptation, which involves an adjustment to all of the conditions of
existence--to social and ethical as well as to the more expressly material
biological circumstances.