from which we can best deduce the conditions of the class. A human
community is made up of individuals of many degrees of intellectual
ability, the mass remaining at a low level, the few attaining a high
level. Yet those of high powers of intellect set the standard for the
whole, teach the lower either by precept or example, and aid effectively
in advancing the standard of the community. A rope or chain is said to
be as weak as its weakest part. A human community, on the contrary, may
be said to be as strong as its strongest part. The standing of the whole
is dependent upon the thoughts and acts of the few, from whom the
general mass receive new ideas and gain new habits. The existing
intellectual and industrial position of mankind is very largely a result
of ideas evolved by individuals age after age, and preserved as the
mental property of the whole. Destroy the books and works of art and
industry of any community, cut off its intellectual leaders, remove from
the general mind the results of education, and it would at once fall
back to a low level and be obliged to begin again its slow climb upward.
The intellectual standing of any civilized nation depends upon two
things: the preservation in books, in memory, and in works of art and
industry, of the ideas of ancient workers and thinkers; and the mental
activity of living thinkers and inventors, whose work takes its start
from this standpoint of stored-up thought. Rob any community of all its
basic ideas, and it would quickly retrograde to a primitive condition
of thought and organization, from which it might need many centuries to
emerge.
It has been said above that man is the highest example of the social
animal. While that is the truth, it is not the whole truth. He is at the
same time the highest example of the communal animal. Mutual aid,
organization into strictly rounded communities, labor for the good of
the whole, is as declared in him as in the most developed community of
the ants, and we admire the work of the latter simply because they
repeat at a lower level the work of man. In truth, in man we have a
splendid example of the existence of the individual initiative in
connection with the communal organization. Specialism exists in a
hundred forms. Some nations have been tied down by it to conditions
almost as fixed as those of the ants. But generalism exists in as full a
measure, new ideas are constantly modifying or replacing the old, and
the communism of man is a progressive one, steadily borne upward on the
wings of new ideas. Individual thought has the fullest swing, and it is
to the system of special reward for useful thought and act that man owes
much of his great advance. On the other hand, reward without useful
service has been one of the leading agencies that have acted to check
human progress.
The lower animals do not possess the advantage of man in his power of
preserving the thoughts and products of the past as a foundation for
new steps of progress. Memory may aid them to a slight degree, but they
have no special means of recording useful ideas. This cannot fairly be
said of the communal forms, which possess the result of the labors of
former generations as useful object lessons. But in the higher animals
no means exist for the permanent preservation of ideas, and each step of
progress must be due to the direct influence of living individuals and
the indirect result of natural selection.
This is one cause of the slow mental advance of the lower animals. A
second is the deficiency in educational influences, which have had so
much to do with human progress. Education is not quite wanting in the
brute creation. There are many instances on record of instruction given
by the adults to the young. But this agency is in its embryo stage, and
its influence must be small. Again, each tribe of lower animals is apt
to fall into a fixed circle of life acts, to become so closely adapted
to some situation or condition that any change of habits would be likely
to prove detrimental. This is a state of affairs tending to produce
stagnation and vigorously to check advance. Many instances of this could
be cited from human history, while it is the common condition with the
animals below man.
To return to the apes, the considerations above taken lead to the
conclusion that it is chiefly, if not solely, to their social habits
that they owe their mental quickness. While only in minor traits
communal, they are eminently social, and have doubtless derived great
advantage from this. The lemurs, which share their habitat and resemble
them in organization, are markedly unsocial, and are as mentally dull as
the apes are mentally quick. Possibly, the thought powers of the apes
once set in train, there may have been something in the exigencies of
arboreal life that quickened their powers of observation; but we are
constrained to believe that the main influence to which they owe their
development is that of social habits, in which they stand at a high, if
not the highest, level among the distinctly social animals.
The thought capacities of the ape intellect are general, not special.
The mind of these animals remains free and capable of new thought in new
situations. It is fully alive to the needs and dangers of arboreal life,
and advances no farther in its native habitat because there is nothing
more of importance to be learned. But while fixed it is not stagnant.
When the ape is taken from its native woods and put among the many new
conditions arising on shipboard and in human habitations, we quickly
perceive indications of its mental alertness. Its faculties of
observation and imitation are actively exercised, and new habits and
conceptions are quickly gained. Could the apes be made to breed freely
in captivity, so that a domestic race, comparable to that of the dogs,
could be obtained, their mental powers might, perhaps, be cultivated to
an extraordinary degree, yielding instances of thought approaching that
of man. The ape is especially notable for its tendency to attempt new
acts of itself, not waiting to be taught, as in the case of other
domesticated animals. In short, it seems by all odds to be the animal
best fitted mentally to serve as the basis of a high intellectual
development, as it is the best fitted physically to change from the
attitude of the quadruped to that of the biped.
The anthropoid apes in general manifest a reversion from the social
toward the solitary state, this condition reaching its ultimate in the
orang, which is one of the most solitary of animals. The smaller forms
are the most social, the gibbons being decidedly so. There is very good
reason to believe that the man-ape was highly social, if we may judge
from what we find in all races of men, and all grades, from the savage
to the civilized. This animal was thus in a position to avail itself of
all the advantages of the social habit, and to gain the mental
development thence arising. How long ago it was when it left the trees
and made its home upon the ground, it is impossible to say. It may have
been as far back as the early Pliocene or the late Miocene Period, or
even earlier. As yet its brain was probably no more developed than in
the case of the other anthropoids, perhaps less so than in the existing
species. But in its new habitat it was exposed to a series of novel
conditions that must have exerted a healthful and stimulating influence
upon its mind.
If it had remained in the trees we should probably to-day have only a
man-ape still. Leaving their safe shelter for the ground, it became
exposed to new dangers and was forced to fit itself to fresh conditions.
Prowling carnivorous animals haunted its new place of residence, and
these it had to avoid by speed or alertness of motion, or combat them by
strength and the use of weapons. The carnivorous tastes which it had in
all probability gained, made it a creature of the chase, pursuing swift
animals, capturing them by fleetness or stratagem, or bringing them down
with the aid of clubs and missiles. Such a new series of duties and
dangers could not fail to exert a vigorous influence upon a brain
already quick of thought and susceptible to fresh impressions, and we
may well conceive that the man-ape then entered upon a new and rapid
phase of mental progress, its brain developing in powers and growing in
dimensions as it slowly became adapted to its new situation and grew
able to cope with fresh demands and critical exigencies.
There is still another influence which has had its share, perhaps a very
prominent share, in the intellectual development of animals, yet which
no writer seems to have considered from this point of view. The
probable effect of this influence needs to be taken into account, in
conclusion of this section of our subject. It is that of the comparative
agency of the senses in the development of the mind, and the effects
likely to arise from the dominance of some one of the senses.
In the lowest animals touch was the predominant, if not the only sense,
taste perhaps being associated with it. But these senses, which demand
actual contact with objects, obviously could give none but the narrowest
conception of the conditions of nature. The other senses, sight,
hearing, and smell, give intimations of the existence and conditions of
more or less distant objects, and their development greatly widened the
scope of outreach in animals and must have exerted a powerful influence
upon the growth of mental conditions.
It need scarcely be said that the sense which gives the fullest and most
extended information about existing things is necessarily the one that
acts most effectively upon the mind, and that this sense is that of
sight. Hearing and smell yield us information concerning certain local
conditions of objects, but sight extends to the limits of the universe,
while in regard to near objects it has the advantage of being
practically instantaneous in action and much fuller in the information
it conveys. Sight, therefore, is evidently the most important of the
senses, so far as the broadening of the mental powers is concerned, and
any animal in which it is predominant must possess a great advantage in
this respect over those species controlled to any great degree by one of
the lower senses.
It may be said here that sight only slowly gained dominance in animal
life. Though the eye, as an organ of vision, is found at a low level in
the animate scale, the indications are that it long played a subordinate
part, and has gained its full prominence only in man. During long ages
life was confined to the sea, hosts of beings dwelling in the
semi-obscurity of the under waters, and great numbers at too great a
depth for light to reach them. To vast multitudes of these sight was
partly or completely useless. The same may be said of hearing, the
under-water habitat being nearly or completely a soundless one. The only
one of the higher senses likely to be of general use to these oceanic
forms is that of smell, and it may be that their knowledge of distant
objects was mainly gained through sensitiveness to odors.
Of invertebrate land animals the same must be said. The land mollusks
and the great order of insects and other land arthropods only to a minor
extent dwell in the open light. Very many species haunt the
semi-obscurity of trees or groves, hide among the grasses, lurk under
bark, sticks, and stones, or dwell through most of their lives
underground. Hosts of others are nocturnal. To only a small percentage
of insects can sight be of any great utility, while hearing seems also
to be of slight importance. Smell is probably the principal sense
through which these animals gain information of distant objects.
There is existing evidence that the sense of smell in some insects is
remarkably acute. The imprisoned female of certain nocturnal species,
for instance, will attract the males from a comparatively immense
distance, under conditions in which neither sight nor hearing could have
been brought into play. The emission of odors and acute sensibility to
them is the only presumable agency at work in those instances. As
regards the most intelligent of the insects, the ants and the termites,
the former are largely subterranean, the latter not only subterranean,
but blind. In the one case, sight can play only a minor part, in the
other, it plays no part at all. Touch and smell seem to be the dominant
senses in these animals, and the degree of intelligence they display
shows of how high a development these senses are susceptible. Yet the
intelligence arising from them must necessarily be local and limited in
its application; it cannot yield the breadth of information and degree
of mental development possible under the dominance of sight.
In the vertebrates we find a fully developed and broadly capable organ
of vision, and it might be hastily assumed that in those animals sight
is the dominant sense. But there are numerous facts which lead to a
different conclusion. Many of the vertebrates are nocturnal, many dwell
in obscure situations, many in the total darkness of caverns,
underground tunnels and excavations, or the ocean's depths. To all these
sight must be of secondary importance. Hearing also can be of no
superior value, and the dominant sense must be that of smell. In the
bats there would appear to be a remarkably acute power of touch, if we
may judge from the facility with which they can avoid obstacles at full
flight after their eyes have been removed.
It might, however, be supposed that in the higher land vertebrates sight
is predominant, and that the diurnal mammals depend principally upon
their eyes for their knowledge of nature. But there are facts which
throw doubt upon this supposition. These facts are of two kinds,
external and internal. That the quadrupeds, in general, are highly
sensitive to odors is well known, and also that they trust very largely
to the sense of smell. Hunters are abundantly aware of this, and have to
be quite as careful to avoid being smelt by their game as to avoid being
seen. We have abundant evidence of the remarkable acuteness of this
sense in so high an animal as the dog, which can follow its prey for
miles by scent alone, and can distinguish the odors, not only of
different species, but of different individuals, being capable of
following the trail of one person amid the tracks of numerous others.
The internal evidence of this fact is equally significant. In the
vertebrates, in general, the olfactory lobe of the brain is largely
developed, much exceeding in size the lobe of the optic nerve. It forms
the anterior portion of the cerebrum, and in many instances constitutes
a large section of that organ, being marked off from it by only a slight
surface depression. If we can fairly judge, then, by anatomical
evidence, the sense of smell plays a very prominent part in the life of
all the lower vertebrates. If we take our domestic animals as an
example, the olfactory lobe of the horse is considerably larger than
that of man, though the brain, as a whole, is very much smaller, so
that, comparatively, this organ constitutes a much larger portion of the
total brain. The other domestic animals yield similar evidence of the
great activity of the sense of smell.
While there is no doubt that sight is an active sense in all the higher
quadrupeds, it evidently divides this activity with smell to a much
greater degree than is the case with man, in whom smell plays a minor
part, sight a major part, among the organs of sense.
This fact shows its effect in the comparative mental development of man
and the lower animals. Man, depending so largely on vision, gains the
broadest conception of the conditions of nature, with a consequent great
expansion of the intellect. The quadrupeds, depending to a considerable
degree upon smell for their conceptions of nature, are much narrower in
their range of information and lower in their mental development. As
regards the ape family, it occupies a position between man and the
quadrupeds, and its intellectual activity may well be due in great
measure to an increased trust in sight and a decreased trust in smell in
gaining its conception of nature.
The question may arise, Why, if sight has this superiority over smell,
did it not long since gain predominance, and relegate smell to a minor
position? It may be answered that the superiority of sight is not
complete. In one particular this sense is inferior to smell. The leading
agency in the development of the sense organs of animals has been the
struggle for existence, including escape from enemies, and the
perception of food-animals or material. In these processes acuteness of
smell plays a very important part. It has, moreover, the advantage of
gathering information from all directions, while sight is very limited
in its range. The eye is so subject to injury that its multiplication
over the body would be rather disadvantageous than otherwise, while,
localized as it is, a movement of the head is necessary to any breadth
of vision, and the whole body must rotate to bring the complete horizon
under observation. It seems evident, from these considerations, that
sight is much inferior to smell in the timely perception of many forms
of danger. Light comes in straight lines only, and a movement of the
body is necessary to perceive perils lying outside these lines. Odors,
on the contrary, spread in all directions, and make themselves manifest
from the rear as well as the front.
In all probability this fact has had much to do with the continued
dependence of animals on smell. In fishes and reptiles a full sweep of
vision is so slowly gained that some more active sentinel sense is
requisite to safety. In mammals the head rotates more easily, but
valuable time is lost in the rotation of the whole body. These animals,
therefore, depend on both sight and smell, in some cases equally, in
some more fully on one or the other of these senses. When we reach the
semi-upright ape, we have to do with a form capable of turning the body
and observing the whole surrounding circle of objects more quickly and
readily than any quadruped. As a result, these animals have grown to
depend more fully on vision and less on smell than the quadrupeds.
Finally, in fully erect man, the power of quick turning and alert
observation of the whole circle of the horizon reaches its ultimate, and
in man sight has become in a large degree the dominant sense, and smell
has fallen to a minor place.
With this change in the relations of the senses has come a change in the
degree of mental development. It is highly probable that the dependence
of the apes on vision instead of smell has had much to do with their
mental activity, quickness of observation, and active curiosity. In man
there can be no question that it has played a great part in the rapid
development of his intellectual powers, and in the extraordinary breadth
of his conception of nature as compared with that of the lower animals.
While hearing and smell advise us of neighboring conditions only, and
have their chief utility as aids to the preservation of existence, sight
makes us aware of the conditions of nature in remote localities,
extending far beyond the limits of the earth. While this sense plays its
part as one of the protective agencies, it is still more useful as an
agent in the acquisition of knowledge in general, and has much to do
with the development of the intellectual faculties. We may look,
therefore, upon the increasing dominance of the sense of sight as a
leading agency in the making of man as a thinking being, and may ascribe
to this in a considerable measure the thirst for information and faculty
of imitation so marked in the apes.
VII
THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE
One of the characteristics of man, of which we spoke as among those to
which his high development is due, is that of language. There is nothing
that has had more to do with the mental progress of the human race than
facility in the communication of thought, and in this vocal language is
the principal agent and in the fullest measure is the instrument of the
mind. Human speech has, in these modern times, become remarkably
expressive, indicating all the conditions, relations, and qualities, not
only of things, but of thoughts and ideal conceptions. And the utility
of language has been enormously augmented by the development of the arts
of writing and printing. Originally thought could only be communicated
by word of mouth and transmitted by the aid of the memory. Now it can be
recorded and kept indefinitely, so that no useful thought of able
thinkers need be lost, but every valuable idea can be retained as an
educative influence through unnumbered ages.
In this instrumentality, which has been of such extraordinary value to
man, the lower animals are strikingly deficient. They are not quite
devoid of vocal language, though it is doubtful if any of the sounds
made by them have a much higher linguistic office than that of the
interjection. But emotional sounds, to which these belong, are not
destitute of value in conveying intelligence. They embrace cries of
warning, appeals to affection, demands for help, calls for food
supplies, threats, and other indications of passion, fear, or feeling.
And the significance of these vocal sounds to animals may often be
higher than we suppose. That is, they may not be limited to the vague
character of the interjection, but may occasionally convey a specific
meaning, indicative of some object or some action. In other words, they
may advance from the interjection toward the noun or the verb, and
approach in value the verbal root, a sound which embraces a complete
proposition. Thus a cry of warning may be so modulated as to indicate to
the hearer, "Beware, a lion is coming!" or to convey some other specific
warning. We know that accent or tone plays a great part in Chinese
speech, the most primitive of existing forms, a variation in tone quite
changing the meaning of words. The same may be the case with the sounds
uttered by animals to a much greater extent than we suppose.
We know this to be the case with some of the birds. The common fowl of
our poultry yards has a variety of distinct calls, each understood by
its mates, while special modulations of some call or cry are not
uncommon among birds. The mammalia are not fluent in vocal powers,
their range of tones being limited, yet they certainly convey definite
information to one another. Recent observers have come to the conclusion
that the apes do, to a certain extent, talk with one another. The
experiments to prove this have not been very satisfactory, yet they seem
to indicate that the woodland cries of the apes possess a certain range
of definite meaning.
We are utterly ignorant of what powers of speech the man-ape possessed.
It must, in its developed state as a land-dwelling, wandering, and
hunting biped, have needed a wider range of utterance than during its
arboreal residence. It was exposed to new dangers, new exigencies of
life affected it, and its old cries very probably gained new meanings,
or new cries were developed to meet new perils or conditions. In this
way a few root words may have been gained, rising above the value of the
interjection, and expressing some degree of definite meaning, though
still at the bottom of the scale of language, the first stepping stones
from the vague cry toward the significant word.
Between this stage and that of human language an immense gap supervenes,
a broad abyss which it seems at first sight impossible to bridge. As the
facts stand, however, it has been largely bridged by man himself. Side
by side with the highly intricate languages which now exist, are
various primitive forms of speech which take us far back toward the
origin of human language. So advanced a people as the Chinese speak a
language practically composed of root words, the higher forms of
expression being attained by simple devices in the combination of these
primitive word forms. The same may be said, in a measure, of ancient
Egyptian speech. We can conceive of an early state of affairs in which
these devices of word compounding were not yet employed, and in which
each word existed as a separate expression, unmodified by association
with any other word. Among the savage races of the earth very crude
forms of language often exist, the methods of associating words into
sentences being of the simplest character, though few surpass the
Chinese in simplicity of system.