development of thought and its instrument which has taken thousands of
years to complete. We cannot fairly judge from it what the speech of
primitive man may have been, for in every case there has been a long
process of development; aided, no doubt, in many cases, by educative
influences acting from the more advanced upon the speech of the less
advanced races.
If we seek to analyze any of these languages, the most intricate as well
as the least advanced, we find ourselves in most instances able to
isolate the root word as the basic element of speech. From this simple
form all the more developed forms seem to have arisen. Take away their
combining devices, and the root words fall apart like so many beads of
speech, each with a defined significance of its own and fully capable of
existing by itself. The Aryan and the Chinese especially offer
themselves to this analytic method. Strip off the suffixes and affixes
from Aryan words, get down to the germinal forms from which these words
have grown, isolate these germs of speech, and we find ourselves in a
language of root forms, each of which has grown vague and wide in
significance as the modifying elements that limited its meaning have
been removed. In the Chinese the problem is a much simpler one. We need
simply to take the existing words out of their place in the sentence and
let them stand alone, and we have root words at first hand. We may go
through the whole range of human speech and, with more or less
difficulty, arrive at a similar result. In short, the evidence seems
conclusive that the language of mankind began in the use of isolated
words of vague and broad significance, and that all the subsequent
development of language consisted in the combination of these words,
with a modification and limitation of their meaning, the families of
speech differing principally in the method of combination devised.
It must, indeed, be said that in isolating the root forms of modern
languages we reach conditions still far removed from those of primitive
speech. These roots are in a measure packed with meaning. Time has added
to their significance, and they lack the simplicity they probably once
possessed. In particular, they have gained ideal senses, entered in a
measure into that broad language of the mind which has been gradually
added to the language of outer nature. The recognition of the existence
of mind and thought doubtless came somewhat late in human development.
Man long knew only his body and the world that surrounded it. Step by
step only did he discover his mind. And when it became necessary to
speak of mental conditions, no new language was invented, but old words
were broadened to cover the new conditions. The mind is analogous to the
body in its operations, ideas are analogues of things, and it was
usually necessary only to add to the physical significance of words the
corresponding ideal significance. In this way a secondary language
slowly grew up, underlying and subtending the primary language, until
the words invented to express the world of things were employed to
include as vast a world of thoughts.
In getting down, then, to the language of primitive man we are obliged
to divest the root forms of speech of all this ideal significance, and
confine them to their physical meanings. In dealing with the languages
of the least advanced existing tribes of mankind, indeed, little of this
is requisite. The language of the mind with them has not yet begun its
growth or is in its first simple stages. Only half the work of the
evolution of language is completed. There is, indeed, no tribe so
undeveloped as to use the primitive forms of speech. The most savage of
the races of mankind have made some progress in the art of combining
words, gained some ideas of syntax and grammatical forms. Yet in certain
instances the progress has been very slight, and in all we can see the
living traces of the earlier method of speech from which they emerged.
It is to the ability to think abstractly and to form words with an
abstract significance that human language owes much of its high
development. But this ability is largely confined to civilized mankind,
savages being greatly or wholly lacking in it. This deficiency is
indicated in their modes of speech. Thus a native of the Society
Islands, while able to say "dog's tail," "sheep's tail," etc., has no
separate word for tail. He cannot abstract the general term from its
immediate relations. In the same way the uncivilized Malay has twenty
different words to express striking with various objects, as with thick
or thin wood, a club, the fist, the palm, etc., but he has no word for
"striking" as an isolated thought. We find the same deficiency in the
speech of the American Indians. A Cherokee, for instance, has no word
for "washing," but can express the different kinds of washing by no less
than thirteen distinct words.
All this indicates a primitive stage in the evolution of language, one
in which every word had its immediate and local application, while in
each word a whole story was told. The power of dividing thought into its
separate elements was not yet possessed. As thought progressed men got
from the idea of "dog" to that of "dog's tail." They could not think of
the part without the whole. Then they reached a word for "dog's tail
wags." But the idea of "wags" as an abstract motion was beyond their
powers of thought. They could not think of action, but only of some
object in action. The language of the American Indians was an immediate
derivation from this mode of word formation, every proposition, however
intricate it might be, constituting a single word, whose component parts
could not be used separately. The mode of speech here indicated is one
form of development of the root. Other forms are the compounding of the
Chinese and the Mongolian and the inflection of the Aryan and the
Semitic, all pointing directly back to the root form as their unit of
growth.
The inference to be drawn from all this is that the language of
primitive man consisted of isolated words, sounds which may originally
have been mere cries or calls, but which gradually gained some
definiteness of meaning, as signifying some of the varied conditions of
the outer world. This is the conclusion to which philologists have now
very generally come. The recognition that language consists of root
words, variously modified and combined, leads back irresistibly to a
period in which those roots had not yet begun to be modified and
combined. The roots are the hard, persistent things in human speech.
Grammatical expedients are the net in which these roots have been caught
and confined. Free them from the net, and it falls to pieces, while the
roots remain intact, the solid and persistent primitive germs of speech.
Yet in isolating root language as the basis of grammatical language we
go far toward closing the gap between animal and human speech. It is
still, doubtless, of considerable width, yet the distinction is no
longer one of kind, but is simply one of degree. Primitive man had a
much greater scope of language than is possessed by any of the lower
animals, and the vocal sounds used had a clearer and more definite
significance; but their nature was the same. They doubtless began in
calls and cries like those in use by animals, and though these had
increased in number and gained more distinct meanings, the difference in
character was not great. In short, the analytic method employed by
modern philologists has gone far to remove the supposed vast distinction
between brute and human speech, and has traced back the language of man
to a stage in which it is nearly related in character to the language of
animals. The distinction has been brought down to one of degree,
scarcely one of kind. A direct and simple process of evolution was
alone needed to produce it, and through that evolution man undoubtedly
passed in his progress upward from his ancestral stage.
The language of the lower animals is a vowel form of speech. It lacks
the consonantal elements, the characteristic of articulation. In this
man seems to have at first agreed with them. The infant begins its vocal
utterances with simple cries; only at a later age does it begin to
articulate. If we may judge from the development of language in the
child, man began to speak with the use of sounds native to the vocal
organs, and progressed by a process of imitation, endeavoring to
reproduce the sounds heard around him: the voices of animals, the sounds
of nature, etc. This tendency to imitate is not peculiar to man. It
exists in many birds, and in some attains a marked development. The
mocking bird, for instance, has an extraordinary flexibility of the
vocal organs and power of imitating the voices of other birds. The
parrot and some other birds go farther in this direction, being capable
of using articulate language and clearly repeating words used by man.
None of the mammalia possess this facility. It is not found in the apes,
and probably was not possessed by the ancestor of man. But it is not
difficult to believe that in the efforts of the latter to gain a greater
variety of vocal utterance, its organs of speech became more flexible,
and in time it gained the power of articulation.
There are races of existing men whose powers of language seem still in
the transition stage between articulate and inarticulate speech. This
seems the case with the Bushmen and Hottentots of South Africa, whose
vocal utterances consist largely of a series of peculiar clicks that are
certainly not articulate speech, though on the road toward it. The
Pygmies of the Central African forests seem similarly to occupy an
intermediate position in the development of language. Those who have
endeavored to talk with them speak of their utterance as being
inarticulate in sound. It appears to be a sort of link between
articulate and inarticulate speech. In short, the great abyss which was
of old thought to lie between the languages of man and the lower animals
has largely vanished through the labors of philologists, and we can
trace stepping-stones over every portion of the wide gap. The language
of man has not alone been evidently a product of evolution, but also one
of development from the vocal utterances of the lower animals; and the
man-ape, in its slow and long progress from brute into man, seems to
have gradually developed that noble instrument of articulate speech
which has had so much to do with subsequent human progress.
VIII
HOW THE CHASM WAS BRIDGED
In his bodily formation the man-ape differed little from man. The
differences which existed were probably of a minor character, no greater
than could readily exist within the limits of a species. If this
assertion be questioned, it seems sufficient to call attention to the
recent researches into the anatomy of the anthropoid apes, which differ
in species, if not in genera, from man, yet are closely similar to him
in all their main features of organization. Even in the brain, to whose
great development man owes his superiority, the only marked difference
is in size. Structurally, the distinctions are unimportant. If, then,
these distant relatives so closely resemble man in physical frame, his
immediate relative in the line of descent must have approached him still
more closely in organization. After this ancestor had become a true,
surface-dwelling biped, the differences in structure were probably so
slight that physically the two forms were in effect identical. The
man-ape was, as there is reason to believe, considerably smaller than
man, perhaps about equal in size and stature to the chimpanzee, but
that does not constitute a specific difference. There may have been some
differences in the skeletal and muscular structure. The vocal organs,
for instance, probably differed, the evolution of language in man being
accompanied with certain changes in the larynx. The skull was certainly
much more ape-like. Yet variations of this kind, due to differences in
mode of life, are minor in importance, and may easily come within the
limits of a species. While the great features of organization remain
intact, small changes, due to new exigencies of life, may take place
without affecting the zooelogical position of an animal. The most
striking difference between man-ape and man, that of the development of
the brain to two or three times its size and weight, is similarly
unessential in classification while the brain remains unchanged in
structure. That it has remained unchanged we may safely deduce from the
close similarity between the brain of man and those of the existing
anthropoid apes. The cause of the increase in size is so evident that it
need only be referred to. Since the era of the man-ape, almost the whole
sum of the forces of development have been centred in the mental powers
of this animal, with the result that the brain has grown in size and
functional capacity, while the remainder of the body has remained
practically unchanged.
That man as an animal has descended from the lower life realm, none who
are familiar with the facts of science now think of denying. This has
attained to the scientist, and to many non-scientists, the level of a
self-evident proposition. But that man as a thinking being has descended
from the lower animals is a different matter, concerning which opinion
is by no means in unison. Even among scientists some degree of
difference of opinion exists, and such a radical evolutionist as Alfred
Russell Wallace finds here a yawning gap in the line of descent, and is
inclined to look upon the intellect of man as a direct gift from the
realm of spirits. His explanation, it is true, is more difficult than
the problem itself. There are no facts to sustain it, and even if he
were not able to see how man's mind could be developed by natural
selection, it is a sort of _reductio ad absurdum_ to call in the angels
to bridge the chasm.
Romanes has dealt with the subject from a different and more scientific
point of view, and seems to have succeeded in showing that man's
intellect at its lowest level is not different in kind from the brute
intellect at its highest level. Controversy on this subject is too apt
to be based on the difference between the intellect of the brute and
that of enlightened man, in disregard of the great mental gap which
exists between the latter and the thought powers of the lowest savage.
In the preceding section an effort was made to show how crude and
imperfect must have been the language of primitive man. Its imperfection
was a fair gauge of that of his powers of thought. His intellect stood
at a very low level, seemingly no further above that of the highest apes
than it was below that of enlightened man.
In fact, enormous as is the interval between the mind of the brute and
that of the man of modern civilization, the whole long line of mental
development can be traced, with the exception of a comparatively small
interval. This is the gap between the intellect of the anthropoid ape
and that of primitive man, the one important last chapter in the story
of mental evolution. Supernaturalism, driven from its strongholds of the
past, has taken its last stand upon this broken link, claiming that here
the line of descent fails, and that the gap could not have been filled
without a direct inflow of intellect from the world of spirits or an
immediate act of creation from the Deity.
This view of the case is not likely to be accepted as final. Science has
bridged so many gaps in the kingdom of nature that it is not likely to
retire baffled from this one, but will continue its investigations in
place of accepting conclusions that have not the standing even of
hypothesis, since they are unsupported by a single known fact. At first
sight, indeed, the facts which bear upon this question seem stubborn
things to explain by the evolution theory. The gap in intellect between
the highest apes and the lowest man is a considerable one, which no
existing ape seems likely ever to cross. However the anthropoid apes
gained their degree of mental ability, it does not appear to be on the
increase. They are in a state of mental stagnation and may have remained
so for millions of years. Something similar, indeed, can be said of the
lowest savages. They also are mentally stagnant. The indications are
that for thousands, or tens of thousands, of years in the past their
intellectual progress has been almost nothing. Yet it is beyond
reasonable question that the advanced thinker of to-day has evolved from
an ancestor as low in the mental scale as this savage, probably much
lower; and this renders it very conceivable that a similar process of
evolution covered the interval between the ape intellect and that of
primitive man.
Somewhere, at some time in the far past, the mental stagnation of man
was broken, and the development of the mind began its long progression
toward enlightenment. This was not in the localities in which the lower
savages are now found, the equatorial forests of Africa and South
America and other realms of savage life, the change in all probability
taking place elsewhere, under new and severe exigencies of life.
Similarly we have much justification in saying that somewhere, at some
time, the mental stagnation of the ape was broken, and the long
development of the mind from ape to man began. This did not take place
in the instances of the existing anthropoids, and, as in the analogous
case of civilized man, its influencing cause must be looked for in
exigencies of existence acting upon some form different in character and
habitat from these apes.
The existing anthropoid apes may justly be compared in condition with
the existing low savages. In both cases a satisfactory adaptation to
their situation has been gained. These apes are still arboreal and
frugivorous, as their remote ancestors were. They have for ages been in
a state of close adaptation to their life conditions, and the influences
of development have been largely wanting. Such evolution as took place
must have been extremely slow. In like manner the lowest savages live in
intimate relations with the conditions surrounding them. All problems of
food-getting, habitation, climate, etc., have long since been solved,
and in the tropical forests in which so many of them dwell they are in
thorough accord with the situation. Mentally, therefore, they are
practically at a standstill and have remained so for thousands of years.
The two cases are parallel ones. We can safely say that the later
development of man took place in other situations and under other
conditions. We may fairly say the same in regard to the ape. Vigorous
influences must have been brought to bear upon the ancestor of man as
the instigating causes of its mental development into man; and similarly
vigorous influences must have been brought to bear upon primitive man to
set in train his mental development into intellectual man. And the
general character of these influences in both cases may readily be
pointed out. An extraordinary development has taken place in the human
intellect within a few thousands, or tens of thousands, of years,
yielding the difference which exists between the cultivated man of
to-day and the debased savage who probably preceded him, and whose
counterpart still exists. This has undoubtedly been due to influences of
the highest potency. If we can show that influences of equal potency
acted upon man's ancestor, we shall have done much toward indicating how
the ape brain may have grown into the brain of man.
In both cases the main agency was in all probability that of conflict.
Both ape and man, as we take it, developed through some form of warfare.
In the former case it was warfare with the animal kingdom; in the latter
it was warfare with the conditions of nature and with hostile man. Each
of these has been potent in its effects, and to each we owe the
completion of a great stage in the evolution of man.
In the tropics, the home of the anthropoid apes of to-day and, probably,
of the animal we have named the man-ape, war between man and nature
scarcely exists. Nature is not hostile to man. There is no occasion for
clothing and little for habitation. Food is abundant for the sparse
populations. Little exertion is called for to sustain life. Mental
stagnation is very likely to supervene. Yet there, as elsewhere,
conflict has had much to do with such mental progress as exists. Mastery
in warfare is due to superior mental resources, which gradually arise
from the exigencies of conflict, and manifest themselves in greater
shrewdness or cunning, superior ability in leadership, better
organization, fuller mutual aid, and the invention of more destructive
weapons and more efficient tools. War acts vigorously on men's minds,
peace acts sluggishly. In the former case man's most valued possession,
his life, is in jeopardy, and his utmost powers are exerted for its
preservation. Every resource within his power is brought to bear to save
himself from wounds or death and to destroy his enemies. If the foes are
equal physically, victory is apt to come to those which are superior
mentally, which are quicker at devising new expedients, more alert in
providing against danger, more skilful in the use of weapons, abler in
combining their forces to act in unison. In short, the whole story of
mankind tells us that mental evolution has been greatly aided by the
influences of warfare, the reaction upon the mind of the effort at
self-preservation, the destruction of those at a lower level of
intellectual alertness, the preservation of the abler and more
energetic, the effect of conflict in bringing into activity all the
resources of the intellect, and the hereditary transmission of the
powers of mind thus developed. It is, undoubtedly, to war between man
and man, and the conflict with the adverse conditions of nature in the
colder regions of the earth, that man's development from his lowest to
his highest intellectual state has been largely due. This is by no means
to say that war is still necessary for this result. Other influences are
now at work, of equal or superior potency, and while the conflict with
nature and the conditions of society is still of importance, war between
man and man is no longer necessary as a mental stimulant. The time was,
and that not very far in the past, when it was an essential element in
human development.
If we descend to the lowest existing savages, however, it is to find
this agency almost non-existent. We can perceive in them no organized
warfare and no alert conflict with nature. They are as yet at the very
beginning of this stage of evolution, and it certainly exerts little
influence upon them. Nature is not adverse, life needs little thought or
exertion, they accept the world as they find it, without question or
revolt, and their thoughts and habits are as unchangeable as the laws of
the Medes and Persians. But the fact that active warfare does not now
exist among the lowest tribes of mankind, does not argue that such a
state has never existed. In truth, we maintain that primitive man is the
outcome of an active and long-continued warfare, and that his settled
and sluggish condition to-day is the ease that follows victory. He has
conquered and is at rest after his labors.
For if we compare primitive man with the anthropoid apes, it is to find
one striking and important difference between them. The anthropoids are
at a level in position with their animal neighbors. Man is lord and
master of the animal kingdom, the dominant being in the world of life.
He has no rival in this lordship, but stands alone in his relation to
the animal kingdom. He is feared and avoided by the largest and
strongest beasts of field and forest. He does not fight defensively, but
offensively, and whatever his relation to his fellow-man, he admits no
equal in the world of life below him. He is the only animal that has
made a struggle for lordship. The gorilla is said to attack the lion and
drive it from its haunts. If it does so, it is not with any desire for
mastery, but simply to rid itself of a dangerous neighbor. The battle
for dominion has been confined to man, and in the winning of it no small
degree of mental development must have taken place.