CHAPTER XVII.

GENERAL SUMMARY AND CONCLUDING REMARKS.

In the present treatise I take as granted the general theory of evolution, so far as it is now accepted by the vast majority of naturalists. That is to say, I assume the doctrine of descent as regards the whole of organic nature, morphological and psychological, with the one exception of man. Moreover, I assume this doctrine even in the case of man, so far as his bodily organization is concerned; it being thus only with reference to the human mind that the exception to which I have alluded is made. And I make this exception in deference to the opinion of that small minority of evolutionists who still maintain that, notwithstanding their acceptance of the theory of descent as regards the corporeal constitution of man, they are able to adduce cogent evidence to prove that the theory fails to account for his mental constitution.

Such being my basis of assumption, we began by considering the state of the question _a priori_. If, in accordance with our assumption, the process of organic and of mental evolution has been continuous throughout the whole region of life and of mind, with the one exception of the mind of man, on grounds of an immensely large analogy we must deem it antecedently improbable that the process of evolution, elsewhere so uniform and ubiquitous, should have been interrupted at its terminal phase. And this antecedent presumption is still further strengthened by the undeniable fact that, in the case of every individual human being, the human mind presents to actual observation a process of gradual development, extending from infancy to manhood. For it is thus shown to be a matter of observable fact that, whatever may have been the origin or the history of human intelligence in the past, as it now exists—or, rather, as in every individual case it now comes into existence—it proves itself to be no exception to the general law of evolution: it unquestionably does admit of gradual growth from a zero level, and without such a gradual growth we have no evidence of its becoming. Furthermore, so long as it is passing through the lower stages of this growth, the human mind ascends through a scale of faculties which are parallel with those that are permanently presented by what I have termed the psychological species of the animal kingdom—a general fact which tends most strongly to prove that, at all events up to the time when the distinctively human qualities of ideation are attained, no difference of kind is apparent between human and brute psychology. Lastly, not only in the individual, but also in the race, the phenomena of mental evolution are conspicuous—so far, at least, as the records of the human race extend. Whether we have regard to actual history, to tradition, to antiquarian remains, or flint implements, we obtain uniform evidence of a continuous process of upward development, which is thus seen to be as characteristic of those additional attributes wherein the human mind now surpasses that of any other species as it is of those attributes which it shares with other species. Therefore, if the process of mental evolution was interrupted between the anthropoid apes and primitive man during the pre-historic period of which we have no record, it must again have been resumed with primitive man, after which it must have continued as uninterruptedly in the human species as it previously did in the animal species. This, to say the least, is a most improbable supposition. The law of continuity is proved to apply on both sides of a psychological interval, where there happens to be a necessary absence of historical information. Yet we are asked to believe that, in curious coincidence with this interval, the law of continuity was violated—notwithstanding that in the case of every individual human mind such is known never to be the case.

In order to overturn so immense a presumption as is thus raised against the contention of my opponents on merely _a priori_ grounds, it appears to me that they must be fairly called upon to supply some very powerful considerations of an _a posteriori_ kind, tending to show that there is something in the constitution of the human mind which renders it virtually impossible to suppose that such an order of mental existence can have proceeded by way of genetic descent from mind of lower orders. I therefore next proceeded to consider the arguments which have been adduced in support of this thesis.

In order that the points of difference on which these arguments are founded might be brought out into clear relief, I began by briefly considering the points of resemblance between the human mind and mind of lower orders. Here we saw that so far as the Emotions are concerned no difference of kind has been, or can be, alleged. The whole series of human emotions have been proved to obtain among the lower animals, except those which depend on the higher intellectual powers of man—_i.e._ those appertaining to religion and perception of the sublime. But all the others—which in my list amount to over twenty—occur in the brute creation; and although many of them do not occur in so highly developed a degree, this is immaterial where the question is one of kind. Indeed, so remarkable is the general similarity of emotional life in both cases—especially when we have regard to the young child and savage man—that it ought fairly to be taken as direct evidence of a genetic continuity between them.

And so, likewise, it is with Instinct. For although this occurs in a greater proportion among the lower animals than it does in ourselves, no one can venture to question the identity of all the instincts which are common to both. And this is the only point that here requires to be established.

Again, with respect to the Will, no argument can arise touching the identity of animal and human volition up to the point where the latter is alleged to take on the attribute of freedom—which, as we saw, under any view depends on the intellectual powers of introspective thought.

There remain, then, only these intellectual powers of introspective Thought, _plus_ the faculties of Morality and Religion. Now, it is evident that, whatever we may severally conclude as touching the distinctive value of the two latter, we must all agree that a prime condition to the possibility of either resides in the former: without the powers of intellect which are competent to frame the abstract ideation that is concerned both in morals and religion, it is manifest that neither could exist. Therefore, in logical order, it is these powers of intellect that first fall to be considered. In subsequent parts of this work I shall fully deal both with morals and religion: in the present part I am concerned only with the intellect.

And here it is, as I have acknowledged, that the great psychological distinction is to be found. Nevertheless, even here it must be conceded that up to a certain point, as between the brute and the man, there is not merely a similarity of kind, but an identity of correspondence. The distinction only arises with reference to those superadded faculties of ideation which occur above the level marked 28 in my diagram—_i.e._ where the upward growth of animal intelligence ends, and the development of distinctively human faculty begins. So that in the case of intellect, no less than in that of emotion, instinct, and volition, there can be no doubt that the human mind runs exactly parallel with the animal, up to the place where these superadded powers of intellect begin to supervene. Therefore, upon the face of them, the facts of comparative psychology thus far, to say the least, are strongly suggestive of these superadded powers having been due to a process of continued evolution.

So much, then, for the points of agreement between animal and human psychology. Turning next to the points of difference, we had first to dispose of certain allegations which were either erroneous in fact or plainly unsound in theory. This involved a rejection _in toto_ of the following distinctions—namely, that brutes are non-sentient machines; that they present no rudiments of reason in the sense of perceiving analogies and drawing inferences therefrom; that they are destitute of any immortal principle; that they show no signs of progress from generation to generation; that they never employ barter, make fire, wear clothes, use tools, and so forth. Among these sundry alleged distinctions, those which are not demonstrably false in fact are demonstrably false in logic. Whether or not brutes are destitute of any immortal principle, and whether or not human beings present such a principle, the science of comparative psychology has no means of ascertaining; and, therefore, any arguments touching these questions are irrelevant to the subject-matter on which we are engaged. Again, the fact that brutes do not resemble ourselves in wearing clothes, making fire, &c., clearly depends on an absence in them of those powers of higher ideation which alone are adequate to yield such products in the way of intelligent action. All such differences in matters of detail, therefore, really belong to, or are absorbed by, the more general question as to the nature of the distinction between the two orders of _ideation_. To this, therefore, as to the real question before us, we next addressed ourselves. And here it was pointed out, _in limine_, that the three living naturalists of highest authority who still argue for a difference of kind between the brute and the man, although they agree in holding that only on grounds of psychology can any such difference be maintained, nevertheless upon these grounds all mutually contradict one another. For while Mr. Mivart argues that there must be a distinction of kind, because the psychological interval between the highest ape and the lowest man is so great; Mr. Wallace argues for the same conclusion on the ground that this interval is not so great as the theory of a natural evolution would lead us to expect: the brain of a savage, he says, is so much more efficient an instrument than the mind to which it ministers, that its presence can only be explained as a preparation for the higher efficiency of mental life as afterwards exhibited by civilized man. Lastly, Professor De Quatrefages contradicts both the English naturalists by vehemently insisting that, so far as the powers of intellect are concerned, there is a demonstrable identity of kind between animal intelligence and human, whether in the savage or civilized condition: he argues that the distinction only arises in the domain of morals and religion. So that, if our opinion on the issue before us were to be in any way influenced by the voice of authority, I might represent the judgments of these my most representative opponents as mutually cancelling one another—thus yielding a zero quantity as against the enormous and self-consistent weight of authority on the other side.

But, quitting all considerations of authority, I proceeded to investigate the question _de novo_, or exclusively on its own merits. To do this it was necessary to begin with a somewhat tedious analysis of ideation. The general result was to yield the following as my classification of ideas.

1. Mere memories of perceptions, or the abiding mental images of past sensuous impressions. These are the ideas which, in the terminology of Locke, we may designate Simple, Particular, or Concrete. Nowadays no one questions that such ideas are common to animals and men.

2. A higher class of ideas, which by universal consent are also common to animals and men; namely, those which Locke called Complex, Compound, or Mixed. These are something more than the simple memories of particular perceptions; they are generated by the mixture of such memories, and therefore represent a compound, of which “particular ideas” are the elements or ingredients. By the laws of association, particular ideas which either resemble one another in themselves, or frequently occur together in experience, tend to coalesce and blend into one: as in a “composite photograph” the sensitive plate is able to unite many more or less similar images into a single picture, so the sensitive tablet of the mind is able to make of many simple or particular ideas, a complex, a compound, or, as I have called it, a _generic_ idea. Now, a generic idea of this kind differs from what is ordinarily called a general idea (which we will consider in the next paragraph), in that, although both are generated out of simpler elementary constituents, the former are thus generated as it were spontaneously or anatomically by the principles of merely perceptual association, while the latter can only be produced by a consciously intentional operation of the mind upon the materials of its own ideation, known as such. This operation is what psychologists term conception, and the product of it they term a concept. Hence we see that between the region of percepts and those of concepts there lies a large intermediate territory, which is occupied by what I have called generic ideas, or _recepts_. A recept, then, differs from a percept in that it is a compound of mental representations, involving an orderly grouping of simpler images in accordance with past experience; while it differs from a concept in that this orderly grouping is due to an unintentional or automatic activity on the part of the percipient mind. A recept, or generic idea, is _imparted to_ the mind by the external “logic of events;” while a general idea, or concept, is _framed by_ the mind consciously working to a higher elaboration of its own ideas. In short, a recept is _received_, while a concept is _conceived_.

3. The highest class of ideas, which psychologists are unanimous in denying to brutes, and which, therefore, we are justified in regarding as the unique prerogative of man. These are the General, Abstract, and Notional ideas of Locke, or the Concepts just mentioned in the last paragraph. As we have there seen, they differ from recepts—and, _a fortiori_, from percepts, in that they are themselves the objects of thought. In other words, it is a peculiarity of the human mind that it is able to think about its own ideas as such, consciously to combine and elaborate them, intentionally to develop higher products out of less highly developed constituents. This remarkable power we found—also by common consent—to depend on the faculty of self-consciousness, whereby the mind is able, as it were, to stand apart from itself, to render one of its states objective to others, and thus to contemplate its own ideas as such. Now, we are not concerned with the philosophy of this fact, but only with its history. How it is that such a faculty as self-consciousness is possible; what it is that can thus be simultaneously the subject and the object of thought; whether or not it is conceivable that the great abyss of personality can ever be fathomed; these and all such questions are quite alien to the scope of the present work. All that we have here to do is to analyze the psychological conditions out of which, as a matter of observable fact, this unique peculiarity emerges—to trace the history of the process, and tabulate the results. Well, we have seen that here, again, every one agrees in regarding the possibility of self-consciousness to be given in the faculty of language. Whether or not we suppose that these two faculties are one—that neither could exist without the other, and, therefore, that we may follow the Greeks in assigning to them the single name of Logos,—at least it is as certain as the science of psychology can make it, that within the four corners of human experience a self-conscious personality cannot be led up to in any other way than through the medium of language. For it is by language alone that, so far as we have any means of knowing, a mind is rendered capable of so far fixing—or rendering definite to itself—its own ideas, as to admit of any subsequent contemplation of them as ideas. It is only by means of marking ideas by names that the faculty of conceptual thought is rendered possible, as we saw at considerable length in Chapter IV.

Such, then, was my classification of ideas. And it is a classification over which no dispute is likely to arise, seeing that it merely sets in some kind of systematic order a body of observable facts with regard to which writers of every school are nowadays in substantial agreement. Now, if this classification be accepted, it follows that the question before us is thrown back upon the faculty of language. This faculty, therefore, I considered in a series of chapters. First it was pointed out that, in its widest signification, “language” means the faculty of making signs. Next, I adopted Mr. Mivart’s “Categories of Language,” which, when slightly added to, serve to give at once an accurate and exhaustive classification of every bodily or mental act with reference to which the term can possibly be applied. In all there were found to be seven of these categories, of which the first six are admittedly common to animals and mankind. The seventh, however, is alleged by my opponents to be wholly peculiar to the human species. In other words, it is conceded that animals do present what may be termed the germ of the sign-making faculty; but it is denied that they be able, even in the lowest degree, to make signs of an intellectual kind—_i.e._ of a kind which consists in the bestowing of names as marks of ideas. Brutes are admittedly able to make signs to one another—and also to man—with the intentional purpose of conveying such ideas as they possess; but, it is alleged, no brute is able to name these ideas, either by gestures, tones, or words. Now, in order to test this allegation, I began by giving a number of illustrations which were intended to show the level that is reached by the sign-making faculty in brutes; next I considered the language of tone and gesture as this is exhibited by man; then I proceeded to investigate the phenomena of articulation, the relation of tone and gesture to words; and, lastly, the psychology of speech. Not to overburden the present summary, I will neglect all the subordinate results of this analysis. The main results, however, were that the natural language of tone and gesture is identical wherever it occurs; but that even when it becomes conventional (as it may up to a certain point in brutes), it is much less efficient than articulate language as an agency in the construction of ideas; and, therefore, that the psychological line between brute and man must be drawn, not at language, or sign-making in general, but at that particular kind of sign-making which we understand by “speech.” Nevertheless, the real distinction resides in the intellectual powers; not in the symbols thereof. So that a man means, it matters not by what system of signs he expresses his meaning. In other words, although I endeavoured to prove that articulation must have been of unique service in developing these intellectual powers, I was emphatic in representing that, when once these powers are present, it is psychologically immaterial whether they find expression in gesture or in speech. In any case the psychological distinction between a brute and a man consists in the latter being able to _mean a proposition_; and the kind of mental act which this involves is technically termed a “judgment.” Predication, or the making of a proposition—whether by gesture, tone, speech, or writing,—is nothing more nor less than the expression of a judgment; and a judgment is nothing more nor less than the apprehension of whatever meaning it may be that a proposition serves to set forth.

Now, this is admitted by all my opponents who understand the psychology of the subject. Moreover, they allow that if once this chasm of predication were bridged, there would be no further chasm to cross. For it is universally acknowledged that, from the simplest judgment which it is possible to make—and, therefore, from the simplest proposition which it is possible to construct—human intelligence displays an otherwise uninterrupted ascent through all the grades of excellence which it afterwards presents. Here, therefore, we had carefully to consider the psychology of predication. And the result of our analysis was to show that the distinctively human faculty in question really occurs further back than at the place where a mind is first able to construct the formal proposition “A is B.” It occurs at the place where a mind is first able to bestow a name, known as such,—to call A _A_, and B _B_, with a cognizance that in so doing it is performing an act of conceptual classification. Therefore, unless we extend the term “judgment” so as to embrace such an act of conceptual naming (as well as the act of expressing a relation between things conceptually named), we must conclude that “the simplest element of thought” is not a judgment, but a concept. It is needless again to go over the ground of this proof; for, although in the course of it I had to point out certain inexcusable errors in psychological analysis on the part of some of my opponents, the proof itself is too complete to admit of any question.

Thus, then, we were brought back to our original distinction between a concept and a recept. But now we were in a position to show that, just as in the matter of conducting “inferences,” so in the matter of making signs, there is an order of ideation that is receptual as well as one that is conceptual. And, more particularly, even in that kind of sign-making which consists in the bestowing of names, ideation of the receptual order may be concerned without any assistance at all from ideation of the conceptual order. In other words, there are names and names. Not every name that is bestowed need necessarily be expressive of a concept, any more than every “inference” that is conducted need necessarily be the result of self-conscious thought. Not only young children before they attain to self-conscious thought, but even talking birds habitually name objects, qualities, actions, and states. Nevertheless, while giving abundant evidence of this fact, I was careful to point out that thus far no argumentative implications of any importance were involved. That a young child and a talking bird should be able thus to learn the names of objects, qualities, &c., by imitation—or even to invent arbitrary names of their own—is psychologically of no more significance than the fact that both the child and the bird will similarly employ gesture-signs or vocal tones whereby to express the simple logic of their recepts. Nevertheless, it is needful in some way to distinguish this non-conceptual kind of naming from that kind which is peculiar to man after he has attained self-consciousness, and thus is able, not only to name, but to _know that he names_—not only to call A _A_, but to _think A as his symbol of_ A. Now, in order to mark this distinction, I have assigned the term _denotation_ to naming of the receptual kind, and applied the term _denomination_ to naming of the conceptual kind. When a parrot calls a dog “Bow-wow” (as a parrot, like a child, can easily be taught to do), it may be said in a sense to be naming the dog; but obviously it is not _predicating_ any characters as belonging to a dog, or performing any act of _judgment_ with regard to a dog—as is the case, for example, with a naturalist who, by means of his name _Canis_, conceptually assigns that animal to a particular zoological genus. Although the parrot may never utter the name “Bow-wow” save when it sees a dog, this fact is attributable to the laws of association acting only in the receptual sphere: it furnishes no shadow of a reason for supposing that the bird ever thinks about the dog as a dog, or sets the concept Dog before its mind as a separate object of thought. Therefore, none of my opponents can afford to deny that in one sense of the word there may be names without concepts: whether as gestures or as words (“vocal gestures”), there may be signs of things without these signs presenting any vestige of predicative value. Now, it is in order not to prejudice the case of my opponents, and thus clearly to mark out the field of discussion, that I have instituted the distinction between names as receptual and conceptual, or denotative and denominative.

This distinction having been clearly understood, the next point was that both kinds of names admit of connotative extension—denotative names within the receptual sphere, and denominative within the conceptual. That is to say, when a name has been applied to one thing, its use may be extended to another thing, which is seen to belong to the same class or kind. The degree to which such connotative extension of a name may take place depends, of course, on the degree in which the mind is able to take cognizance of resemblances or analogies. Hence the process can go much further in the conceptual sphere than it does in the receptual. But the important point is that it unquestionably takes place in the latter within certain limits. Nor is this anything more than we should antecedently expect. For in the lengthy account and from the numerous facts which I gave of the receptual intelligence of brutes, it was abundantly proved that long before the differential engine of conception has come to the assistance of mind, mind is able to reach a high level in the distinguishing of resemblances or analogies by means of receptual discrimination alone. Consequently, it is inevitable that non-conceptual or denotative names should undergo a connotative extension, within whatever limits these powers of merely receptual discrimination impose. And, as a matter of fact, we found that such is the case. A talking bird will extend its denotative name from one dog in particular to any other dog which it may happen to see; and a young child, after having done this, will extend the denotative name still further, so as to include images, and eventually pictures, of dogs. Hence, if the receptual intelligence of a parrot were somewhat more advanced than it happens to be, we can have no doubt that it would do the same: the only reason why in this matter it parts company with a child so soon as it does, is because its receptual intelligence is not sufficiently developed to perceive the resemblance of images and pictures to the objects which they are intended to represent. But the receptual intelligence of a dog is higher than that of a parrot, and some dogs are able to perceive resemblances of this kind. Therefore if dogs, like parrots, had happened to be able to articulate, and so to learn the use of denotative names, there can be no doubt that they would have accompanied the growing child through a somewhat further reach of connotative utterance than is the case with the only animals which present the anatomical conditions required for the imitation of articulate sounds. Both dogs and monkeys are able, in an extraordinary degree, to _understand_ these sounds: that is to say, they can learn the meanings of an astonishing number of denotative names, and also be taught to apprehend a surprisingly large extension of connotative significance. Consequently, if they could but _imitate_ these sounds, after the manner of a parrot, it is certain that they would greatly distance the parrot in this matter of receptual connotation.

But, lastly, we are not shut up to any such hypothetical case. For the growing child itself furnishes us with evidence upon the point, which is no less cogent than would be the case if dogs and monkeys were able to talk. For, without argumentative suicide, none of my opponents can afford to suggest that, up to the age when self-consciousness dawns, the young child is capable of conceptual connotation; yet it is unquestionable that up to that age a continuous growth of connotation has been taking place, which, beginning with the level that it shares with a parrot, is eventually able to construct what I have called “receptual propositions,” the precise nature of which I will summarise in a subsequent paragraph. The evidence which I have given of this connotative extension of denotative names by children before the age at which self-consciousness supervenes—and, therefore, _prior to the very condition which is required for conceptual ideation_—is, I think, overwhelming. And I do not see how its place in my argument can be gainsaid by any opponent, except at the cost of ignoring my distinction between connotation as receptual and conceptual. Yet to do this would be to surrender his whole case. Either there is a distinction, or else there is not a distinction, between connotation that is receptual, and connotation that is conceptual. If there is no distinction, all argument is at an end: the brute and the man are one in kind. But I allow that there is a distinction, and I acknowledge that the distinction resides where it is alleged to reside by my opponents—namely, in the presence or absence of self-consciousness on the part of a mind which bestows a name. Or, to revert to my own terminology, it is the distinction between denotation and denomination.

Now, in order to analyze this distinction, it became needful further to distinguish between the highest level of receptual ideation that is attained by any existing brute, and those further developments of receptual ideation which are presented by the growing child, after it parts company with all existing brutes, but before it assumes even the lowest stage of conceptual ideation—_i.e._ prior to the dawn of self-consciousness. This subordinate distinction I characterized by the terms “lower recepts” and “higher recepts.” Already I had instituted a distinction between “lower concepts” and “higher concepts,” meaning by the former the conceptual naming of recepts, and by the latter a similar naming of other concepts. So that altogether four large and consecutive territories were thus marked out: (1) Lower Recepts, which are co-extensive with the psychology of existing animals, including a very young child; (2) Higher Recepts, which occupy a psychological area between the recepts of animals and the first appearance of self-consciousness in man; (3) Lower Concepts, which are concerned only with the self-conscious naming of recepts; (4) Higher Concepts, which have to do with the self-conscious classification of other concepts known as such, and the self-conscious naming of such ideal integrations as may result therefrom.

Now, if all this is true of naming, clearly it must also be true of judging. If there is a stage of pre-conceptual naming (denotation), there must also be a stage of pre-conceptual judgment, of which such naming is the expression. No doubt, in strictness, the term judgment should be reserved for conceptual thought (denomination); but, in order to avoid an undue multiplication of terms, I prefer thus to qualify the existing word “judgment.” Such, indeed, has already been the practice among psychologists, who speak of “intuitive judgments” as occurring even in acts of perception. All, therefore, that I propose to do is to institute two additional classes of non-conceptual judgment—namely, lower receptual and higher receptual, or, more briefly, receptual and pre-conceptual. If one may speak of an “intuitive,” “unconscious,” or “perceptual” judgment (as when we mistake a hollow bowl for a sphere), much more may we speak of a receptual judgment (as when a sea-bird dives from a height into water, but will not do so upon land), or a pre-conceptual judgment (as when a young child will extend the use of a denotative name without any denominative conception). In all, then, we have four phases of ideation to which the term judgment may be thus either literally or metaphorically applied—namely, the perceptual, receptual, pre-conceptual, and conceptual. Of these the last only is judgment, properly so called. Therefore I do not say that a brute really judges when, without any self-conscious thought, it brings together certain reminiscences of its past experience in the form of recepts, and translates for us the result of its ideation by the performance of what Mr. Mivart calls “practical inferences.” Neither do I say that a brute really judges when, still without self-conscious thought, it learns correctly to employ denotative names. Nay, I should deny that a brute really judges even if, after it is able to denotate separately two different recepts (as is done by a talking bird), it were to name these two recepts simultaneously when thus combined in an act of “practical inference.” Although there would then be the outward semblance of a proposition, we should not be strictly right in calling it a proposition. It would, indeed, be the _statement of a truth perceived_; but not the statement of a truth perceived _as true_.

Now, if all this be admitted in the case of a brute—as it must be by any one who takes his stand on the faculty of true or conceptual judgment,—obviously it must also be admitted in the case of the growing child. In other words, if it can be proved that a child is able to state a truth before it is able to state a truth as true, it is thereby proved that in the psychological history of every human being there is first the kind of predication which is required for dealing with receptual knowledge, or for the stating of truths perceived; and next the completed judgment which is required for dealing with conceptual knowledge, or of stating truths perceived as true. Of course the condition required for the raising of this lower kind of judgment and this lower kind of predication (if, for the sake of convenience, we agree to use these terms) into the higher or only true kind of judgment and predication, is the advent of self-consciousness. Or, in other words, the place where a mere statement of truth first passes into a real predication of truth, is determined by the place at which there first supervenes the faculty of introspective reflection. The whole issue is thus reduced to an analysis of self-consciousness. To this analysis, therefore, we next addressed ourselves.

Seeing that the faculty in question only occurs in man, obviously it is only in the case of man that any material is supplied for the analysis of it. Moreover, as previously remarked, so far as this our analysis is concerned, we have only to deal with the psychology of self-consciousness: we are not concerned with its philosophy. Now, as a matter of psychology, no one can possibly dispute that the faculty in question is one of gradual development; that during the first two or three years of the growing intelligence of man there is no vestige of any such faculty at all; that when it does begin to dawn, the human mind is already much in advance of the mind of any brute; but that, even so, it is much less highly developed than it is afterwards destined to become; and that the same remark applies to the faculty of self-consciousness itself. Furthermore, it will be granted that self-consciousness consists in paying the same kind of attention to internal, or psychical processes, as is habitually paid to external, or physical processes—although, of course, the degrees in which such attention may be yielded are as various in the one case as in the other. Lastly, it will be further granted that in the minds of brutes, as in the minds of men, there is a world of images, or recepts; and that the only reason why in the former case these images are not attended to unless called up by the sensuous association of their corresponding objects, is because the mind of a brute is not able to leave the ground of such merely sensuous association, so as to move through the higher and more tenuous region of introspective thought. Nevertheless, I have proved that this image-world, even in brutes, displays a certain amount of internal activity, which is not wholly dependent on sensuous associations supplied from without. For the phenomena of “home-sickness,” pining for absent friends, dreaming, hallucination, &c., amply demonstrate the fact that in our more intelligent domesticated animals there may be an internal (though unintentional) play of ideation, wherein one image suggests another, this another, and so on, without the need of any immediate associations supplied from present objects of sense. Furthermore, I have pointed out that receptual ideation of this kind is not restricted to the images of sense-perception; but is largely concerned with the mental states of other animals. That is to say, the logic of recepts, even in brutes, is sufficient to enable the mind to establish true analogies between subjective states and the corresponding states of other intelligences: animals habitually and accurately interpret the mental states of other animals, while also well knowing that other animals are able similarly to interpret theirs. Hence, it must be further conceded that intelligent animals recognize a world of ejects, as well as a world of objects: mental existence is known to them ejectively, though, as I allow, never thought upon subjectively. At this stage of mental evolution the individual—whether an animal or an infant—so far realizes its own individuality as to be informed by the logic of recepts that it is one of a kind, although of course it does not recognize either its own or any other individuality as such.

Nevertheless, there is thus given a rudimentary or nascent form of self-consciousness, which up to the stage of development that it attains in a brute or an infant may be termed receptual self-consciousness; while in the more advanced stages which it presents in young children it may be termed pre-conceptual self-consciousness. Pre-conceptual self-consciousness is exhibited by all children after they have begun to talk, but before they begin to speak of themselves in the first person, or otherwise to give any evidence of realizing their own existence as such. Later on, when true self-consciousness does arise, the child, of course, is able to do this; and then only is supplied the condition _sine quâ non_ to a reflection upon its own ideas—hence to a knowledge of names as names, and so to a statement of truths as true. But long before this stage of true or conceptual self-consciousness is reached—whereby alone is rendered possible true or conceptual predication—the child, in virtue of its pre-conceptual self-consciousness, is able to make known its wants, and otherwise to communicate its ideas, by way of pre-conceptual predication. I gave many instances of this pre-conceptual predication, which abundantly proved that the pre-conceptual self-consciousness of which it is the expression amounts to nothing more than a practical recognition of self as an active and feeling agent, without any introspective recognition of that self as an object of knowledge.

Given, then, this stage of mental evolution, and what follows? The child, like the animal, is supplied by its logic of recepts with a world of images, standing as signs of outward objects; with an ejective knowledge of other minds, and with that kind of recognition of self as an active, suffering, and accountable agent to which allusion has just been made. But, over and above the animal, the child has now at its command a much more improved machinery of sign-making, which, as we have before seen, is due to the higher evolution of its receptual ideation. Now among the contents of this ideation is a better apprehension of the mental states of other human beings, together with a greatly increased power of denotative utterance, whereby the child is able to name receptually such ejective states as it thus receptually apprehends. These, therefore, severally receive their appropriate denotations, and so gain clearness and precision as ejective images of the corresponding states experienced by the child itself. “Mamma pleased to Dodo” would have no meaning as spoken by a child, unless the child knew from his own feelings what is the state of mind which he thus ejectively attributes to his mother. Hence, we find that at the same age the child will also say “Dodo pleased to mamma.” Now it is evident that we are here approaching the very borders of true or conceptual self-consciousness. The child, no doubt, is still speaking of himself in objective phraseology; but he has advanced so far in the interpretation of his own states of mind as clearly to name them, in the same way as he would name any external objects of sense-perception. Thus is he enabled to fix these states before his mental vision as things which admit of being denoted by verbal signs, although as yet he has never thought about either the states of mind or his names for them _as such_, and, therefore, has not yet attained to the faculty of denomination. But the interval between denotation and denomination has now become so narrow that the step from recognizing “Dodo” as not only the object, but also the subject of mental changes, is rendered at once easy and inevitable. The mere fact of attaching verbal signs to mental states has the effect of focussing attention upon those states; and when attention is thus focussed habitually, there is supplied the only further condition which is required to enable a mind, through its memory of previous states, to compare its past with its present, and so to reach that apprehension of continuity among its own states wherein the full introspective, or conceptual consciousness of self consists.

Several subordinate features in the evolution of this conceptual from pre-conceptual self-consciousness were described; but it is needless again to mention them. Enough has been here said to show ample grounds for the conclusions which my chapter on “Self-consciousness” was mainly concerned in establishing—namely, that language is quite as much the antecedent as it is the consequent of self-consciousness; that pre-conceptual predication is indicative of a pre-conceptual self-consciousness; and that from these there naturally and inevitably arise those higher powers of conceptual predication and conceptual self-consciousness on which my opponents (disregarding the phases that lead up to them) have sought to rear their alleged distinction of kind between the brute and the man.

Thus, as a general result of the whole inquiry so far, we may say that throughout the entire range of mental phenomena we have found one and the same distinction to obtain between the faculties of mind as perceptual, receptual, and conceptual. Percept, Recept, and Concept; Perceptual Judgment, Receptual Judgment, and Conceptual Judgment; Indication, Denotation, and Denomination;—these are all manifestations, in different regions of psychological inquiry, of the same psychological distinctions. And we have seen that the distinction between a Recept and a Concept, which is thus carried through all the fabric of mind, is really the only distinction about which there can be any dispute. Moreover, we have seen that the distinction is on all hands allowed to depend on the presence or absence of self-consciousness. Lastly, we have seen that even in the province of self-consciousness itself the same distinction admits of being traced: there is a form of self-consciousness which may be termed receptual, as well as that which may be termed conceptual. The whole question before us thus resolves itself into an inquiry touching the relation between these two forms of self-consciousness: is it or is it not observable that the one is developmentally continuous with the other? Can we or can we not perceive that in the growing child the powers of receptual self-consciousness, which it shares with a brute, pass by slow and natural stages into those powers of conceptual self-consciousness which are distinctive of a man?

This question was fully considered in Chapter XI. I had previously shown that so far as the earliest, or indicative phase of language is concerned, no difference even of degree can be alleged between the infant and the animal. I had also shown that neither could any such difference be alleged with regard to the earlier stages of the next two phases—namely, the denotative and the receptually connotative. Moreover, I had shown that no difference of kind could be alleged between this lower receptual utterance which a child shares with a brute, and that higher receptual utterance which it proceeds to develop prior to the advent of self-consciousness. Lastly, I had shown that this higher receptual utterance gives to the child a psychological instrument whereby to work its way from a merely receptual to an incipiently conceptual consciousness of self. Such being the state of the facts as established by my previous analysis, I put to my opponents the following dilemma. Taking the case of a child about two years old, who is able to frame such a rudimentary, communicative, or pre-conceptual proposition as “Dit ki” (Sister is crying), I proceeded thus.

“Dit” is the denotative name of one recept, “ki” the denotative name of another: the object and the action which these two recepts severally represent happen to occur together before the child’s observation: the child, therefore, denotes them simultaneously—_i.e._ brings them into _apposition_. The apposition in consciousness of these two recepts, with their corresponding denotations, is thus effected _for_ the child by the logic of events: it is not effected _by_ the child in the way of any intentional or self-conscious grouping of its ideas, such as we have seen to be the distinguishing feature of the logic of concepts. Here, then, comes the dilemma. For I say, either you here have conceptual judgment, or else you have not. If you say that this is conceptual judgment, you destroy the basis of your own distinction between man and brute, because then you must also say that brutes conceptually judge—the child as yet not having attained to conceptual self-consciousness. If, on the other hand, you say that here you have not conceptual judgment, inasmuch as you have not self-consciousness, I ask at what stage in the subsequent development of the child’s intelligence you would consider conceptual judgment to arise. Should you answer that it first arises when conceptual self-consciousness first supplies the condition to its arising, I must refer you to the proof already given that the advent of self-consciousness is itself a gradual process, the precedent conditions of which are supplied far down in the animal series. But if this is so, where the faculty of stating a truth perceived passes into the higher faculty of perceiving the truth as true, there is a continuous series of gradations connecting the one faculty with the other. Up to the point where this continuous series of gradations begins, the mind of the child is, as I have already proved, indistinguishable from the mind of an animal by any one principle of psychology. Will you, then, maintain that up to this time the two orders of psychical existence are identical in kind, but that during its ascent through this final series of gradations the human intelligence becomes distinct in kind from that of animals, and _therefore also from its own previous self_? If so, your argument here ends in a contradiction.

In confirmation of this my general argument, two subsidiary considerations were then added. The first was that although the advance to true self-consciousness from lower grades of mental development is no doubt a very great and important matter, still it is not so great and important in comparison with what this development is afterwards destined to become, as to make us feel that it constitutes any distinction _sui generis_—or even, perhaps, the principal distinction—between the man and the brute. For even when self-consciousness does arise, and has become fairly well developed, the powers of the human mind are still in an almost infantile condition. In other words, the first genesis of true self-consciousness marks a comparatively low level in the evolution of the human mind—as we might expect that it should, if its genesis depends upon, and therefore lies so near to, those precedent conditions in merely animal psychology to which I have assigned it. But, if so, does it not follow that, great as the importance of self-consciousness afterwards proves to be in the development of distinctively human ideation, in itself, or in its first beginning, it does not betoken any very perceptible advance upon those powers of pre-conceptual ideation which it immediately follows? There is thus shown to be even less reason for regarding the first advent of conceptual self-consciousness as marking a psychological difference of kind, than there would be so to regard the advent of those higher powers of conceptual ideation which subsequently—though as gradually—supervene between early childhood and youth. Yet no one has hitherto ventured to suggest that the intelligence of a child and the intelligence of a youth display a difference of kind.

The second subsidiary consideration which I adduced was, that even in the case of a fully developed self-conscious intelligence, both receptual and pre-conceptual ideation continue to play an important part. The vast majority of our verbal propositions are made for the practical purposes of communication, or without the mind pausing to contemplate the propositions in the light of self-consciousness. No doubt in many cases, or in those where highly abstract ideation is concerned, this independence of the two faculties is more apparent than real: it arises from each having undergone so much elaboration by the assistance which it has derived from the other, that both are now in possession of a large body of organized material on which to operate, without requiring, whenever they are exercised, to build up the structure of this material _ab initio_. When I say “Heat is a mode of motion,” I am using what is now to me a mere verbal sign, which expresses an external fact: I do not require to examine my own ideas upon the abstract relation which the proposition sets forth, although for the original attainment of these ideas I had to exercise many and complex efforts of conceptual thought. But although I hold this to be the true explanation of the apparent independence of predication and introspection in all cases of highly abstract thought, I am convinced, on the ground of adequate reasons given, that in all cases where those lower orders of ideation are concerned to which I have so often referred as receptual and pre-conceptual, the independence is not only apparent, but real. Now, if the reasons which I have assigned for this conclusion are adequate—and they are reasons sanctioned by Mill,—it follows that the ideation concerned in ordinary predication becomes so closely affiliated with that which is expressed in the lower levels of sign-making, that even if the connecting links were not supplied by the growing child, no one would be justified, on psychological grounds alone, in alleging any difference of kind between one level and another. The object of all sign-making is communication, and from our study of the lower animals we know that communication first has to do exclusively with recepts, while from our study of the growing child we know that it is the signs used in the communication of recepts which first lead to the formation of concepts. For concepts are first of all named recepts, known as such; and we have seen in previous chapters that this kind of knowledge (_i.e._ of names as names) is rendered possible by introspection, which, in turn, is reached by the naming of self as an agent. But even after the power of conceptual introspection has been fully reached, demand is not always made upon it for the communication of merely receptual knowledge; and therefore it is that not every proposition requires to be introspectively contemplated as such before it can be made. Given the power of denotative nomination on the one hand, and the power of even the lowest degree of connotative nomination on the other, and all the conditions are furnished to the formation of non-conceptual statements, which differ from true propositions only in that they do not themselves become objects of thought. And the only difference between such a statement when made by a young child, and the same statement when similarly made by a grown man, is that in the former case it is not even _potentially_ capable of itself becoming an object of thought.

* * * * *

The investigation having been thus concluded so far as comparative psychology was concerned, I next turned upon the subject the independent light of comparative philology. Whereas we had hitherto been dealing with what on grounds of psychological analysis alone we might fairly infer were the leading phases in the development of distinctively human ideation, we now turned to that large mass of direct evidence which is furnished by the record of Language, and is on all hands conceded to render a kind of unintentional record of the pre-historic progress of this ideation.

The first great achievement of comparative philology has been that of demonstrating, beyond all possibility of question, that language as it now exists did not appear ready-made, or by way of any specially created intuition. Comparative philology has furnished a completed proof of the fact that language, as we now know it, has been the result of a gradual evolution. In the chapter on “Comparative Philology,” therefore, I briefly traced the principles of language growth, so far as these are now well recognized by all philologists. It was shown, as a matter of classification, that the thousand or more existing languages fall into about one hundred families, all the members of each family being more or less closely allied, while members of different families do not present evidence of genetic affinity. Nevertheless, these families admit of being comprised under larger groups or “orders,” in accordance with certain characteristics of structure, or type, which they present. Of these types all philologists are agreed in distinguishing between the Isolating, the Agglutinating, and the Inflectional. Some philologists make a similar distinction between these and the Polysynthetic, while all are agreed that from the agglutinative the Incorporating type has been derived, and from the inflectional the Analytic.

Passing on from classification to phylogeny, we had to consider the question of genetic relationship between the three main orders, _inter se_, and also between the Polysynthetic type and the Agglutinating. The conflict of authoritative opinion upon this question was shown to have no bearing upon the subject-matter of this treatise, further than to emphasize the doctrine of the polyphylectic origin of language—the probability appearing to be that, regarded as types, both the isolating and the polysynthetic are equally archaic, or, at all events, that they have been of equally independent growth. In this connection I adduced the hypothesis of Dr. Hale, to the effect that the many apparently independent tongues which are spoken by different native tribes of the New World, may have been in large part due to the inventions of accidentally isolated children. The curious correlation between multiplicity of independent tongues and districts favourable to the life of unprotected children—in Africa as well as in America—seemed to support this hypothesis; while good evidence was given to show that children, if left much alone, do invent for themselves languages which have little or no resemblance to that of their parents.

Without recapitulating all that was said upon the phases and causes of linguistic evolution in its various lines of descent, it will be enough to remind the reader that in every case the result of philological inquiry is here the same—namely, to find that languages become simpler in their structure the further they are traced backwards, until we arrive at their so-called “roots.” These are sometimes represented as the mysterious first principles of language, or even as the aboriginal _data_ whose origin is inexplicable. As a matter of fact, however, these roots are nothing more than the ultimate results of philological analysis: in no other sense than this can they be supposed “primary.” Seeing, then, that these roots represent the materials of language up to the place where the evolution of language no longer admits of being clearly traced, it is evident that their antecedents, whatever they may have been, necessarily lie beyond the reach of philological demonstration, as distinguished from philological inference. This, of course, is what an evolutionist knows antecedently _must be the case somewhere_ in the course of any inquiry touching the process of evolution, wherever he may have occasion to trace it. For the further he is able to trace it, the nearer must he be coming to the place where the very material which he is investigating has taken its origin; and as it is this material itself which furnishes the evidences of evolution, when it has been traced back to its own origin, the inquiry reaches a vanishing point. Adopting the customary illustration of a tree, we might say that when a philologist has traced the development of the leaves from the twigs, the twigs from the branches, the branches from the stems, and the stems from the roots, he has given to the evolutionist all the evidence of evolution which in this particular line of inquiry is antecedently possible. The germ of ideation out of which the roots developed must obviously lie beyond the reach of the philologist as such; and if any light is to be thrown upon the nature of this germ, or if any evidence is to be yielded of the phases whereby the germ gave origin to the roots, this must be done by some other lines of inquiry finding similar germs giving rise to similar products elsewhere. In the present instance, the only place where we can look for such parallel processes of evolution is in the case of the growing child, which I have already considered.

Here, then, we are in the presence of exactly the same distinction with regard to the origin of Language, as we were at the beginning of this treatise with regard to the origin of Man. For we there saw that, while we have the most cogent historical proof of the principles of evolution having governed the progress of civilization, we have no such direct proof of the descent of man from a brutal ancestry. And here likewise we find that, so long as the light of philology is able to guide us, there can be no doubt that the principles of evolution have determined the gradual development of languages, in a manner strictly analogous to that in which they have determined the ever-increasing refinement and complexity of social organizations. Now, in the latter case we saw that such direct evidence of evolution from lower to higher levels of culture renders it well-nigh certain that the method must have extended backwards beyond the historical period; and hence that such direct evidence of evolution uniformly pervading the historical period in itself furnishes a strong _primâ facie_ presumption that this period was itself reached by means of a similarly gradual development of human faculty. And thus, also, it is in the case of language. If philology is able to prove the fact of evolution in all known languages as far back as the primitive roots out of which they have severally grown, the presumption becomes exceedingly strong that these earliest and simplest elements, like their later and more complex products, were the result of a natural growth. Or, in the words already quoted from Geiger, we cannot forbear concluding that language must once have had no existence at all. Nevertheless, it is important to distinguish between demonstrated fact and speculative inference, however strong; and, therefore, I began by stating the stages of evolution through which languages are now known to have passed from the root-stage upwards. Having done this, I proceeded to consider the question touching the origin of these roots themselves.

First, as to their number, we found that the outside estimate, in the younger days of philological research, gave one thousand as a fair average of the roots which go to feed any living language; but that this estimate might now be safely reduced by three-fourths. Indeed, in his latest work, Professor Max Müller professes to have reduced the roots of Sanskrit to as low a number as 121, and thinks that even this is excessive. Regarding the character of roots, we saw that some philologists look upon them as the actual words which were used by the pre-historic speakers, who, therefore, “talked with one another in single syllables, indicative of ideas of prime importance, but wanting all designation of their relations.”[335] On the other hand, it is now the generally accepted belief, that “roots are the phonetic and significant types discovered by the analysis of the comparative philologist as common to a group of allied words,”[336]—or, as it were, composite phonograms of families of words long since extinct as individuals. We saw, however, that this difference of opinion among philologists does not affect the present inquiry, seeing that even the phonetic-type theory does not question that the unknown words out of the composition of which a root is now extracted must have been genetically allied with one another, and exhibited the closeness of their kinship by a close similarity of their sounds.

A much more important question for us is the character of these roots with respect to their significance. In this connection we found that they indicate what Professor Max Müller calls “general ideas,” or “concepts;” bear testimony to an already and, comparatively speaking, advanced stage of social culture; are all expressive either of actions or states; and betray no signs of imitative origin. Taking each of these characters separately, we found that although all the 121 roots of Sanskrit are expressive of general ideas, the order of generality is so low as for the most part to belong to that which I had previously called “lower concepts,” or “named recepts.” Next, that they all bear intrinsic testimony to their own comparatively recent origin, and, therefore, are “primitive” only in the sense of representing the last result of philological analysis: they certainly are very far from primitive in the sense of being aboriginal. Again, that they are all of the nature of verbs was shown to be easily explicable; and, lastly, the fact that none of them betray any imitative source is not to be wondered at, even on the supposition that onomatopœia entered largely into the composition of aboriginal speech. For, on the one hand, we saw that in the struggle for existence among aboriginal and early words, those only could have stood any chance of survival—_i.e._ of leaving progeny—which had attained to some degree of connotative extension, or “generality;” and, on the other hand, that in order to do this an onomatopoetic word must first have lost its onomatopoetic significance. A large body of evidence was adduced in support of the onomatopoetic theory, and certain objections which have been advanced against it were, I think, thoroughly controverted. Later on, however, we saw that the question as to the degree in which onomatopœia entered in to the construction of aboriginal speech is really a question of secondary interest to the evolutionist. Whether in the first instance words were all purely arbitrary, all imitative, or some arbitrary and some imitative,—in any case the course of their subsequent evolution would have been the same. By connotative extension in divergent lines, meanings would have been progressively multiplied in those lines through all the progeny of ever-multiplying terms—just in the same way as we find to be the case in “baby-talk,” and as philologists have amply proved to be the case with the growth of languages in general.

That speech from the first should have been concerned with the naming of generic ideas, or higher recepts, as well as with particular objects of sense, is what the evolutionist would antecedently expect. It must be remembered that the kind of classification with which recepts are concerned is that which lies nearest to the automatic groupings of sensuous perception: it depends on an absence of any power analytically to distinguish less perceptible points of difference among more conspicuous points of resemblance—or non-essential analogies among essential analogies with which they happen to be frequently associated in experience. On the other hand, the kind of classification with which concepts are concerned is that which lies furthest from the automatic groupings of sensuous perception: it depends on the power of analytically distinguishing between essentials and non-essentials among resemblances which occur associated together in experience. Classification there doubtless is in both cases; but in the one it is due to the obviousness of analogies, while in the other it is due to the mental dissociation of analogies as apparent and real. Or else, in the one case it is due to constancy of association in experience of the objects, attributes, actions, &c., classified; while in the other case it is due to a conscious disregard of such association.

Now, if we remember these things, we can no longer wonder that the palæontology of speech should prove early roots to have been expressive of “generic,” as distinguished from “general” ideas. The naming of actions and processes so habitual, or so immediately apparent to perception, as those to which the “121 concepts” tabulated by Professor Max Müller refer, does not betoken an order of ideation very much higher than the pre-conceptual, in virtue of which a young child is able to give expression to its higher receptual life, prior to the advent of self-consciousness. In view of these considerations, my only wonder is that the 121 root-words do not present _better_ evidence of conceptual thought. This, however, only shows how comparatively small a part self-conscious reflection need play in the practical life of early man, even when so far removed from the really “primitive” condition of hitherto wordless man as was that of the pastoral people who have left this record of ideation in the roots of Aryan speech.

After having thus explained the absence of words significant of “particular ideas” among the roots of existing language, as well as the generic character of those which the struggle for existence has permitted to come down to us, we went on to consider sundry other corroborations of our previous analysis which are yielded by the science of philology. First we saw that this science has definitely proved two general facts with regard to the growth of predication—namely, that in all the still existing radical languages there is no distinction between noun, adjective, verb, or particle; and that the structure of all other languages shows this to have been the primitive condition of language-structure in general: “every noun and every verb was originally by itself a complete sentence,” consisting of a subject and predicate fused into one—or rather, let us say, not yet differentiated into the _two_, much less into the _three_ parts which now go to constitute the fully evolved structure of a proposition. Now, this form of predication is “condensed” only because it is undeveloped; it is the undifferentiated protoplasm of predication, wherein the “parts of speech” as yet have no existence. And just as this, the earliest stage of predication, is distinctive of the pre-conceptual stage of ideation in a child, so it is of the pre-conceptual ideation of the race. Abundant evidence was therefore given of the gradual evolution of predicative utterance, _pari passu_ with conceptual thought—evidence which is woven through the whole warp and woof of every language which is now spoken by man. In particular, we saw that pronouns were originally words indicative of space relations, and strongly suggestive of accompanying acts of pointing—“I” being equivalent to “this one,” “He” to “that one,” &c. Moreover, just as the young child begins by speaking of itself in the third person, so “Man regarded himself as an object before he learnt to regard himself as a subject,”[337] as is proved by the fact that “the objective cases of the personal as well as of the other pronouns, are always older than the subjective.”[338] Pronominal elements afterwards became affixed to nouns and verbs, when these began to be differentiated from one another; and thus various applications of a primitive and highly generalized noun or verb were rendered by means of these elements, which, as even Professor Max Müller allows, “must be considered as remnants of the earliest and almost pantomimic phase of language, in which language was hardly as yet what we mean by language, namely _logos_, a gathering, but only a pointing.” Similarly, Professor Sayce remarks of this stage in the evolution of predicative utterance—which, be it observed, is precisely analogous to that occupied by a young child whose highly generalized words require to be assisted by gestures—“It is certain that there was a time in the history of speech when articulate or semi-articulate sounds uttered by primitive man were made the significant representations of thought by the gestures with which they were accompanied: and this complex of sound and gesture—a complex in which, be it remembered, the sound had no meaning apart from the gesture—was the earliest sentence.” Thus it was that “grammar has grown out of gesture”—different parts of speech, with the subsequent commencements of declension, conjugation, &c., being all so many children of gesticulation: but when in subsequent ages the parent was devoured by this youthful progeny, they continued to pursue an independent growth in more or less divergent lines of linguistic development.

For instance, we have abundant evidence to prove that, even after articulate language had gained a firm footing, there was no distinction between the nominative and genitive cases of substantives, nor between these and adjectives, nor even between any words as subject-words and predicate-words. All these three grammatical relations required to be expressed in the same way, namely, by a mere apposition of the generalized terms themselves. In course of time, however, these three grammatical differentiations were effected by conventional changes of position between the words apposed, in some cases the form of predication being A B, and that of attribution or possession B A, while in other branches of language-growth the reverse order has obtained. Eventually, however, “these primitive contrivances for distinguishing between the predicate, the attribute, and the genitive, when the three ideas had in course of ages been evolved by the mind of the speaker, gradually gave way to the later and more refined machinery of suffixes, auxiliaries, and the like.”[339]

And so it is with all the other so-called “parts of speech,” in those languages which, in having passed beyond the primitive stage, have developed parts of speech at all. “These are the very broadest outlines of the process by which conceptual roots were predicated, by which they came under the sway of the categories—became substantives, adjectives, adverbs, and verbs, or by whatever other names the results thus obtained may be described. The minute details of this process, and the marvellous results obtained by it, can be studied in the grammar of every language or family of languages.”[340] Thus, philology is able to trace back, stage by stage, the form of predication as it occurs in the most highly developed, or inflective language, to that earliest stage of language in general, which I have called the indicative.

Many other authorities having been quoted in support of these general statements, and also for the purpose of tracing the evolution of predicative utterance in more detail, I proceeded to give illustrations of different phases of its development in the still existing languages of savages; and thus proved that they, no less than primitive man, are unable to “supply the blank form of a judgment,” or to furnish what my opponents regard as the criterion of human faculty. Therefore, the only policy which can possibly remain for these opponents to take up, is that of abandoning their Aristotelian position: no longer to take their stand upon the grounds of purely _formal_ predication as this happens to have been developed in the Indo-European branch of language; but altogether upon those of _material_ predication, or, as I may say, upon the meaning or substance of a judgment, as distinguished from its grammar or accidents.

In other words, it may possibly still be argued that, although the issue is now thrown back from the “blank form” of predication on which my opponents have hitherto relied, to the hard fact of predication itself, this hard fact still remains. Even though I have shown that in the absence of any parts of speech predication requires to be conducted in a most inefficient manner; still, it may be said, predication _is_ conducted, and _must be_ conducted—for assuredly it is only in order to conduct it that speech can ever have existed at all.

Now, I showed that if my opponents do not adopt this change of position, their argument is at an end. For I proved that, after all the foregoing evidence, there is no longer any possibility of question touching the continuity of growth between the predicative germ in a sentence-word, and the fully evolved structure of a formal proposition. But, on the other hand, I next showed that this change of position, even if it were made, could be of no avail. For, if the term “predication” be thus extended to a “sentence-word,” it thereby becomes deprived of that distinctive meaning upon which alone the whole argument of my adversaries is reared: it is conceded that no distinction obtains between speaking and pointing: the predicative phase of language has been identified with the indicative: man and brute are acknowledged to be “brothers.” That is to say, if it be maintained that the indicative signs of the infant child or the primitive man are predicative, no shadow of a reason can be assigned for withholding this designation from the indicative signs of the lower animals. On the other hand, if this term be denied to both, its application to the case of spoken language in its fully evolved form must be understood to signify but a difference of phase or degree, seeing that the one order of sign-making has been now so completely proved to be but the genetic and improved descendant of the other. In short, the truth obviously is that we have _a proved continuity of development between all stages of the sign-making faculty_; and, therefore, that any attempt to draw between one and another of them a distinction of kind has been shown to be impossible.

The conclusions thus reached at the close of Chapter XIV. with regard to the philology of predication were greatly strengthened by additional facts which were immediately adduced in the next Chapter with regard to the philology of conception. Here the object was to throw the independent light of philology upon a point which had already been considered as a matter of psychology, namely, the passage of receptual denotation into conceptual denomination. This is a point which had previously been considered only with reference to the individual: it had now to be considered with reference to the race.

First it was shown that, owing to the young child being surrounded by an already constructed grammar of predicative forms, the earlier phases in the evolution of speech are greatly foreshortened in the ontogeny of mankind, as compared with what the study of language shows them to have been in the phylogeny. Gesture-signs are rapidly starved out when a child of to-day first begins to speak, and so to learn the use of grammatical forms. But early man was under the necessity of elaborating his grammar out of his gesture-signs—and this at the same time as he was also coining his sentence-words. Therefore, while the acquisition of names and forms of speech by infantile man must have depended in chief part upon gestures and grimace, this acquisition by the infantile child is actively inimical to both.

Next we saw that the philological doctrine of “sentence-words” threw considerable additional light on my psychological distinction between ideas as general and generic. For a sentence-word is the expression of an idea hitherto _generalized_, that is to say _undifferentiated_. Such an idea, as we now know, stands at the antipodes of thought from one which is due to what is called a _generalization_—that is to say, a conceptual synthesis of the results of a previous analysis. And the doctrine of sentence-words recognizes an immense historical interval (corresponding with the immense psychological interval) between the generic and the general orders of ideation.

Again, we saw that in all essential particulars the semiotic construction of this the most primitive mode of articulate communication which has been preserved in the archæology of spoken language, bears a precise resemblance to that which occurs in the natural language of gesture. As we saw, “gesture-language has no grammar properly so called;” and we traced in considerable detail the analogies—so singularly numerous and exact—between the forms of sentences as now revealed in gesture and as they first emerged in the early days of speech. In other words, the earliest record that speech is able to yield as to the nature of its own origin, clearly reveals to us this origin as emerging from the yet more primitive language of tone and gesture. For this is the only available explanation of their close family resemblance in the matter of syntax.

Furthermore, we have seen that in gesture language, as in the forms of primitive speech now preserved in roots, the purposes of predication are largely furthered by the mere apposition of denotative terms. A generalized term of this kind (which as yet is neither noun, adjective, nor verb), when brought into apposition with another of the same kind, serves to convey an idea of relationship between them, or to state something of the one by means of the other. Yet apposition of this kind need betoken no truly conceptual thought. As we have already seen, the laws of merely sensuous association are sufficient to insure that when the objects, qualities, or events, which the terms severally denote, happen to occur together in Nature, they _must_ be thus brought into corresponding apposition by the mind: it is the logic of events which inevitably guides such pre-conceptual utterance into a statement of the truth that is perceived: the truth is _received into_ the mind, not _conceived by_ it. And it is obvious how repeated statements of truth thus delivered in receptual ideation, lead onwards to conceptual ideation, or to statements of truth as true.

Now, if all this has been the case, it is obvious that aboriginal words can have referred only to matters of purely receptual significance—_i.e._ “to those physical acts and qualities which are directly apprehensible by the senses.” Accordingly, we find in all the earliest root-words, which the science of philology has unearthed, unquestionable and unquestioned evidence of “fundamental metaphor,” or of a conceptual extension of terms which were previously of no more than receptual significance. Indeed, as Professor Whitney says, “so pervading is it, that we never regard ourselves as having read the history of any intellectual or moral term till we have traced it back to its physical origin.” Without repeating all that I have so recently said upon this matter, it will be enough once more to insist on the general conclusions to which it led—namely, psychological analysis has already shown us the psychological priority of the recept; and now philological research most strikingly corroborates this analysis by actually finding the recept in the body of every concept.

Lastly, I took a brief survey of the languages now spoken by many widely separated races of savages, in order to show the extreme deficiency of conceptual ideation that is thus represented. In the result, we saw that what Archdeacon Farrar calls “the hopeless poverty of the power of abstraction” is so surprising, that the most ardent evolutionist could not well have desired a more significant intermediary between the pre-conceptual intelligence of _Homo alalus_, and the conceptual thought of _Homo sapiens_.

* * * * *

Having thus concluded the Philology of our subject, I proceeded, in the last chapter, to consider the probable steps of the transition from receptual to conceptual ideation in the race.

First I dealt with a view which has been put forward on this matter by certain German philologists, to the effect that speech originated in wholly meaningless sounds, which in the first instance were due to merely physiological conditions. By repeated association with the circumstances under which they were uttered, these articulate sounds are supposed to have acquired, as it were automatically, a semiotic value. The answer to this hypothesis, however, evidently is, that it ignores the whole problem which stands to be solved—namely, the genesis of those powers of ideation which first put a soul of meaning into the previously insignificant sounds. That is to say, it begs the whole question which stands for solution, and, therefore, furnishes no explanation whatsoever of the difference which has arisen between man and brute. Nevertheless, the principles set forth in this the largest possible extension of the so-called interjectional theory, are, I believe, sound enough in themselves: it is only the premiss from which in this instance they start that is untrue. This premiss is that aboriginal man presented no rudiments of the sign-making faculty, and, therefore, that this faculty itself required to be created _de novo_ by accidental associations of sounds with things. But we have seen, as a matter of fact, that this must have been very far from having been the case; and, therefore, while recognizing such elements of truth as the “purely physiological” hypothesis in question presents, I rejected it as in itself not even approaching a full explanation of the origin of speech.

Next I dealt with the hypothesis that was briefly sketched by Mr. Darwin. Premising, as Geiger points out, that the presumably superior sense of sight, by fastening attention upon the movements of the mouth in vocal sign-making, must have given our simian ancestry an advantage over other species of quadrumana in the matter of associating sounds with receptual ideas; we next endeavoured to imagine an anthropoid ape, social in habits, sagacious in mind, and accustomed to use its voice extensively as an organ of sign-making, after the manner of social quadrumana in general. Such an animal might well have distanced all others in the matter of making signs, and even proceeded far enough to use sounds in association with gestures, as “sentence-words”—_i.e._ as indicative of such highly generalized recepts as the presence of danger, &c.,—even if it did not go the length of making denotative sounds, after the manner of talking-birds. Moreover, as Mr. Darwin has pointed out, there is a strong probability that this simian ancestor of mankind was accustomed to use its voice in musical cadences, “as do some of the gibbon-apes at the present day;” and this habit might have laid the basis for that semiotic interruption of vocal sounds in which consists the essence of articulation.

My own theory of the matter, however, is slightly different to this. For, while accepting all that goes to constitute the substance of Mr. Darwin’s suggestion, I think it is almost certain that the faculty of articulate sign-making was a product of much later evolution, so that the creature who first presented this faculty must have already been more human than “ape-like.” This _Homo alalus_ stands before the mind’s eye as an almost brutal object, indeed; yet still, erect in attitude, shaping flints to serve as tools and weapons, living in tribes or societies, and able in no small degree to communicate the logic of his recepts by means of gesture-signs, facial expressions, and vocal tones. From such an origin, the subsequent evolution of sign-making faculty in the direction of articulate sounds would be an even more easy matter to imagine than it was under the previous hypothesis. Having traced the probable course of this evolution, as inferred by the aid of sundry analogies; and having dwelt upon the remarkable significance in this connection of the inarticulate sounds which still survive as so-called “clicks” in the lowly-formed languages of Africa; I went on to detail sundry considerations which seemed to render probable the prolonged existence of the imaginary being in question—traced the presumable phases of his subsequent evolution, and met the objection which might be raised on the score of _Homo alalus_ being _Homo postulatus_.

In conclusion, however, I pointed out that whatever might be the truth as touching the time when the faculty of articulation arose, the course of mental evolution, after it did arise, must have been the same. Without again repeating the sketch which I gave of what this course must have been, it will be enough to say, in the most general terms, that I believe it began with sentence-words in association with gesture-signs; that these acted and reacted on one another to the higher elaboration of both; that denotative names, for the most part of onomatopoetic origin, rapidly underwent connotative extensions; that from being often and necessarily used in apposition, nascent predications arose; that these gave origin, in later times, to the grammatical distinctions between adjectives and genitive cases on the one hand, and predicative words on the other; that likewise gesture-signs were largely concerned in the origin of other grammatical forms, especially of pronominal elements, many of which afterwards went to constitute the material out of which the forms of declension and conjugation were developed; but that although pronouns were thus among the earliest words which were differentiated by mankind as separate parts of speech, it was not until late in the day that any pronouns were used especially indicative of the first person. The significance of this latter fact was shown to be highly important. We have already seen that the whole distinction between man and brute resides in the presence or absence of conceptual thought, which, in turn, is but an expression of the presence or absence of self-consciousness. Consequently, the whole of this treatise has been concerned with the question whether we have here to do with a distinction of kind or of degree—of origin or of development. In the case of the individual, there can be no doubt that it is a distinction of degree, or development; and I had previously shown that in this case the phase of development in question is marked by a change of phraseology—a discarding of objective terms for the adoption of subjective when the speaker has occasion to speak of self. And now I showed that in the fact here before us we have a precisely analogous proof: in exactly the same way as psychology marks for us “the transition in the individual,” philology marks for us “the transition in the race.”

In the foregoing _résumé_ of the present instalment of my work I have aimed only at giving an outline sketch of the main features. And even these main features have been so much abbreviated that it is questionable whether more harm than good will not have been done to my argument by so imperfect a summary of it. Nevertheless, as a general result, I think that two things must now have been rendered apparent to every impartial mind. First, that the opponents of evolution have conspicuously failed to discharge their _onus probandi_, or to justify the allegation that the human mind constitutes a great and unique exception to the otherwise uniform law of evolution. Second, that not only is this allegation highly improbable _a priori_, and incapable of proof _a posteriori_, but that all the evidence that can possibly be held to bear upon the subject makes directly on the side of its disproof. The only semblance of an argument to be adduced in its favour rests upon the distinction between ideation as conceptual and non-conceptual. That such a distinction exists I freely admit; but that it is a distinction of kind I emphatically deny. For I have shown that the comparatively few writers who still continue to regard it as such, found their arguments on a psychological analysis which is of a demonstrably imperfect character; that no one of them has ever paid any attention at all to the actual process of psychogenesis as this occurs in a growing child; and that, with the exception of Professor Max Müller, the same has to be said with regard to their attitude towards the “witness of philology.” Touching the psychogenesis of a child, I have shown that there is unquestionable demonstration of a gradual and uninterrupted passage from the one order of ideation to the other; that so long as the child’s intelligence is moving only in the non-conceptual sphere, it is not distinguishable in any one feature of psychological import from the intelligence of the higher mammalia; that when it begins to assume the attributes of conceptual ideation, the process depends on the development of true self-consciousness out of the materials supplied by that form of pre-existing or receptual self-consciousness which the infant shares with the lower animals; that the condition to this advance in mental evolution is given by a perceptibly progressive development of those powers of denotative and connotative utterance which are found as far down in the psychological scale as the talking birds; that in the growing intelligence of a child we have thus as complete a history of “ontogeny,” in its relation to “phylogeny,” as that upon which the embryologist is accustomed to rely when he reads the morphological history of a species in the epitome which is furnished by the development of an individual; and, therefore, that those are without excuse who, elsewhere adopting the principles of evolution, have gratuitously ignored the direct evidence of psychological transmutation which is thus furnished by the life-history of every individual human being.

Again, as regards the independent witness of philology, if we were to rely on authority alone, the halting and often contradictory opinions which from time to time have been expressed by Professor Max Müller with reference to our subject, are greatly outweighed by those of all his brother philologists. But, without in any way appealing to authority further than to accept matters of fact on which all philologists are agreed, I have purposely given Professor Max Müller an even more representative place than any of the others, fully stated the nature of his objections, and supplied what appears to me abundantly sufficient answers. So far as I can understand the reasons of his dissent from conclusions which his own admirable work has materially helped to support, they appear to arise from the following grounds. First, a want of clearness with regard to the principles of evolution in general:[341] second, a failure clearly or constantly to recognize that the roots of Aryan speech are demonstrably very far from primitive in the sense of being aboriginal: third, a want of discrimination between ideas as general and generic, or synthetic and unanalytical: fourth, the gratuitous and demonstrably false assumption that in order to name a mind must first conceive. Of these several grounds from which his dissent appears to spring, the last is perhaps the most important, seeing that it is the one upon which he most expressly rears his objections. But if I have proved anything, I have proved that there is a power of affixing verbal or other signs as marks of merely receptual associations, and that this power is _invariably_ antecedent to the origin of conceptual utterance in the only case where this origin admits of being directly observed—_i.e._, in the psychogenesis of a child. Again, in the case of pre-historic man, so far as the palæontology of speech furnishes evidence upon the subject, this makes altogether in favour of the view that in the race, as in the individual, denotation preceded denomination, as antecedent and consequent. Nay, I doubt whether Max Müller himself would disagree with Geiger where the latter tersely says, in a passage hitherto unquoted, “Why is it that the further we trace words backwards the less meaning do they present? I know not of any other answer to be given than that the further they go back the less conceptuality do they betoken.”[342] Nor can he refuse to admit, with the same authority, that “conceptual thought (_Begriff_) allows itself to be traced backwards into an ever narrowing circle, and inevitably tends to a point where there is no longer either thought or speech.”[343] But if these things cannot be denied by Max Müller himself, I am at a loss to understand why he should part company with other philologists with regard to the origin of conceptual terms. With them he asserts that there can be no concepts without words (spoken or otherwise), and with them he maintains that when the meanings of words are traced back as far as philology can trace them, they obviously tend to the vanishing point of which Geiger speaks. Yet, merely on the ground that this vanishing point can never be actually reached by the investigations of philology—_i.e._, that words cannot record the history of their own birth,—he stands out for an interruption of the principle of continuity at the place where words originate. A position so unsatisfactory I can only explain by supposing that he has unconsciously fallen into the fallacy of concluding that because all A is B, therefore all B is A. Finding that there can be no concepts without names, he concludes that there can be no names without concepts.[344] And on the basis of such a conclusion he naturally finds it impossible to explain how either names or concepts could have had priority in time: both, it seems, must have been of contemporaneous origin; and, if this were so, it is manifestly impossible to account for the natural genesis of either. But the whole of this trouble is imaginary. Once discard the plainly illogical inference that because names are necessary to concepts, therefore concepts are necessary to names, and the difficulty is at an end. Now, I have proved, _ad nauseam_, that there are names and names: names denotative, and names denominative; names receptual, as well as names conceptual. Even if we had not had the case of the growing child actually to prove the process—a case which he, in common with all my other opponents, in this connexion ignores,—on general grounds alone, and especially from our observations on the lower animals, we might have been practically certain that the faculty of sign-making _must_ have preceded that of _thinking the signs_. And whether these pre-conceptual signs were made by gesture, grimace, intonation, articulation, or all combined, clearly no difference would arise so far as any question of their influence on psychogenesis is concerned. As a matter of fact, we happen to know that the semiotic artifice of articulating vocal tones for purposes of denotation, dates back so far as to bring us within philologically measurable distance of the origin of denomination, or conceptual thought—although we have seen good reason to conclude that before that time tone, gesture, and grimace must have been much more extensively employed in sign-making by aboriginal man than they now are by any of the lower animals. So that, upon the whole, unless it can be shown that my distinction between denotation and denomination is untenable—unless, for instance, it can be shown that an infant requires to think of names as such before it can learn to utter them,—then I submit that no shadow of a difficulty lies against the theory of evolution in the domain of philology. While, on the other hand, all the special facts as well as all the general principles hitherto revealed by this science make entirely for the conclusion, that pre-conceptual denotation laid the psychological conditions which were necessary for the subsequent growth of conceptual denomination; and, therefore, yet once again to quote the high authority of Geiger, “Speech created Reason; before its advent mankind was reasonless.”[345]

And if this is true of philology, assuredly it is no less true of psychology. For “the development of speech is only a copy of that chain of processes, which began with the dawn of [human] consciousness, and eventually ends in the construction of the most abstract idea.”[346] Unless, therefore, it can be shown that my distinction between ideation as receptual and conceptual is invalid, I know not how my opponents are to meet the results of the foregoing analysis. Yet, if this distinction should be denied, not only would they require to construct the science of psychology anew; they would place themselves in the curious position of repudiating the very distinction on which their whole argument is founded. For I have everywhere been careful to place it beyond question that what I have called receptual ideation, in all its degrees, is identical with that which is recognized by my opponents as non-conceptual; and as carefully have I everywhere shown that with them I fully recognize the psychological difference between this order of ideation and that which is conceptual. The only point in dispute, therefore, is as to the possibility of a natural transition from the one to the other. It is for them to show the impossibility. This they have hitherto most conspicuously failed to do. On the other hand, I now claim to have established the possibility beyond the reach of a reasonable question. For I claim to have shown that the _probability_ of such a transition having previously occurred in the race, as it now occurs in every individual, is a probability that has been raised tower-like by the accumulated knowledge of the nineteenth century. Or, to vary the metaphor, this probability has been as a torrent, gaining in strength and volume as it is successively fed by facts and principles poured into it by the advance of many sciences.

Of course it is always easy to withhold assent from a probability, however strong: “My belief,” it may be said, “is not to be wooed; it shall only be compelled.” Indeed, a man may even pride himself on the severity of his requirements in this respect; and in popular writings we often find it taken for granted that any scientific doctrine is then only entitled to be regarded as scientific when it has been demonstrated. But in science, as in other things, belief ought to be proportionate to evidence; and although for this very reason we should ever strive for the attainment of better evidence, scientific caution of such a kind must not be confused with a merely ignorant demand for impossible evidence. Actually to demonstrate the transition from non-conceptual to conceptual ideation in the race, as it is every day demonstrated in the individual, would plainly require the impossible condition that conceptual thought should have observed its own origin. To demand any demonstrative proof of the transition in the race would therefore be antecedently absurd. But if, as Bishop Butler says, “probability is the very guide of life,” assuredly no less is it the very guide of science; and here, I submit, we are in the presence of a probability so irresistible that to withhold from it the embrace of conviction would be no longer indicative of scientific caution, but of scientific incapacity. For if, as I am assuming, we already accept the theory of evolution as applicable throughout the length and breadth of the realm organic, it appears to me that we have positively _better_ reasons for accepting it as applicable to the length and breadth of the realm mental. In other words, looking to all that has now been said, I cannot help feeling that there is actually better evidence of a psychological transition from the brute to the man, than there is of a morphological transition from one organic form to another, in any of the still numerous instances where the intermediate links do not happen to have been preserved. Thus, for example, in my opinion an evolutionist of to-day who seeks to constitute the human mind a great exception to the otherwise uniform principle of genetic continuity, has an even more hopeless case than he would have were he to argue that a similar exception ought to be made with regard to the structure of the worm-like creature Balanoglossus.

If this comparison should appear to betray any extravagant estimate on my part of the cogency of the evidence which has thus far been presented, I will now in conclusion ask it to be remembered that my case is not yet concluded. For hitherto I have almost entirely abstained from considering the mental condition of _savages_. The reason why this important branch of my subject has not been touched is because I reserve it for the next instalment of my work. But when we leave the groundwork of psychological principles on which up to this point we have been engaged, and advance to the wider field of anthropological research in general, we shall find much additional evidence of a more concrete kind, which almost uniformly tends to substantiate the conclusions already gained. The corroboration thus afforded is indeed, to my thinking, superfluous; and, therefore, will not be adduced in this connection. Nevertheless, while tracing the principles of mental evolution from the lowest levels which are actually occupied by existing man, we shall find that no small light is incidentally thrown upon the demonstrably still more primitive intelligence of pre-historic man. Thus shall we find that we are led back by continuous stages to a state of still human ideation, which brings us into contact almost painfully close with that of the higher apes. This, indeed, is a side of the general question which my opponents are prone to ignore—just as they ignore the parallel side which has to do with the psychogenesis of a child. And, of course, when they thus ignore both the child and the savage, so as directly to contrast the adult psychology of civilized man with that of the lower animals, it is easy to show an enormous difference. But where the question is as to whether this is a difference of degree or of kind, the absurdity of disregarding the intermediate phases which present themselves to actual observation is surely too obvious for comment. At all events I think it may be safely promised, that when we come to consider the case of savages, and through them the case of pre-historic man, we shall find that, in the great interval which lies between such grades of mental evolution and our own, we are brought far on the way towards bridging the psychological distance which separates the gorilla from the gentleman.

INDEX.

A

Abstraction. _See_ Ideas

Addison, Mrs. K., on sign-making by a jackdaw, 97

Adjectives, appropriately used by parrots, 129, 130, 152; early use of, by children, 219; not differentiated in early forms of speech, 295 _et seq._; origin of Aryan, 306; and in language generally, 385-86.

Adverbs not differentiated in early forms of speech, 306

African Bushmen. _See_ Hottentots

African languages. _See_ Languages

Agglomerative. _See_ Languages

Agglutinating. _See_ Languages

American languages. _See_ Languages

Analytic. _See_ Languages

Anatomy, evidence of man’s descent supplied by, 19

Animals. _See_ Brutes

Animism of primitive man, 275

Ants, intelligence of, 52, 53; sign-making by, 91-95

Apes, brain-weight of, 16; bodily structure of, 19; counting by, 58, 215; understanding of words by, 125, 126; unable to imitate articulate sounds, 153-157; psychological characters of anthropoid, in relation to the descent of man, 364-370; singing, 370, 373-378; other vocal sounds made by, 374; erect attitude assumed by, 381, 382

Appleyard on language of savages, 349

Apposition. _See_ Predication

Aristotle, on intelligence of brutes, 12, and of man, 20; his classification of the animal kingdom, 79; his logic based on grammar of the Greek language, 314, 320

Articulation, chap. vii.; classification of different kinds of, 121; meaningless, 121, 122; understanding of, 122-129; by dogs, 128; use of, with intelligent signification by talking birds, 129-139; arbitrary use of, by young children, 138-144; relation of, to tone and gesture, 145-162; importance of sense of sight to development of, 366, 367; probable period and mode of genesis of in the race, 370-373

Aryan languages. _See_ Languages

Aryan race, civilization of, 272; antiquity of, 273

Audouin on a monkey recognizing pictorial representations, 188

Axe, discovery of, by neolithic man, 214

B

Barter only used by man, 19

Basque language. _See_ Language

Bateman, Dr. F., on speech-centre of brain, 134, 135

Bates, on intelligence of ants, 92, 93; on a monkey recognizing pictorial representations, 188.

Bats the only mammals capable of flight, 156

Bear, intelligence of, 51; understanding tones of human voice, 124

Beattie, Dr., on intelligence of a dog, 100

Bees, sign-making by, 90

Bell, Professor A. Graham, on teaching a dog to articulate, 128; on the ideation of deaf-mutes, 150

Belt on intelligence of ants, 52, 92

Benfry on roots of Sanskrit, 267

Berkeley on ideas, 21, 22

Binet on analogies between perception and reason, 32 and sensation, 37, 46

Bingley on bees understanding tones of human voice, 124

Bleek, on origin of pronouns, 302; on the sentence-words of African Bushmen, 316, 337, 338; on onomatopœia, 339; on the clicks of Hottentots and African Bushmen, 373

Bonaparte, Prince Lucien, on possible number of articulate sounds, 373

Bopp on the origin of speech, 240

Bowen, Professor F., on psychology of judgment, 167

Boyd Dawkins, Professor, on discovery of axe by neolithic man, 214

Bramston, Miss, on intelligence of a dog, 56

Brazil, climate and native languages of, 262, 263

Brown, Thomas, on generalization, 44

Browning, A. H., on intelligence of a dog, 99, 100

Brutes, mind of, compared with human, 6-39; emotions of, 7; instincts of, 8; volition of, 8; intellect of, 9; Mr. Mivart on psychology of, 10, 177; as machines, 11; rationality of, 11, 12; soul of, 12; Bishop Butler on immortality of, 12; instances of intelligence of, 51-63; ideas of causality in, 58-60; appreciation of principles by, 60, 61; sign-making by, 88-102; understanding of words by, 123-127; articulation by, 128-138, 152; reasons why none have become intellectual rivals of man, 154-157; self-consciousness in relation to, 175-178; recognizing pictorial representations, 188, 189; conditions to genesis of self-consciousness manifested by, 195-199; counting by, 56-58, 214, 215; psychology of, in relation to the descent of man, 364-384

Buffon, on intelligence of brutes, 12, 117; his parrot, 201

Bunsen, on onomatopœia, 282; on Egyptian language, 297, 298; on the substantive verb, 309

Burton on sign-making by Indians, 105

Bushmen, clicks in the language of, 291

Butler, Bishop, on immortality of brutes, 12

C

California, climate and native languages of, 261, 262

Caldwell on language of savages, 349

Carlyle on fundamental metaphor, 344

Carpenter, Commander Alfred, on monkeys using stones to open oysters, 382

Casalis on poverty of savage languages in abstract terms, 351

Cat, intelligence of, 59, 98, 99; use of signs by, 158

Caterpillars, sign-making by, 95, 96

Causation, ideas of, in brutes, 58-60; origin of idea of, in man, 210

Cebus, intelligence of, 60, 61; different tones uttered by, 96

Champollion on Egyptian hieroglyphics, 311

Charlevoix on language of savages, 349

Cheyenne language. _See_ Languages

Child, psychogenesis of, 4, 5; emotions and instincts of, 7, 8; intelligence of, as regards classification, 26, 27, 41, 66, 67; instinctive and imitative articulation by, 121, 122; understanding of words by infantile, 123; spontaneous invention of words by, 138-143; indicative stage of language in, 158, 218-222, 324; denotation and connotation of, 179, 191, 218-231, 283-285; recognizing portraits, &c., 188, 189; rise of self-consciousness in, 200-212; use of personal pronoun by, 201, 232, 408, 409; hypothesis of languages having been originated by, 259-263; undifferentiated language of, 296, 297, 317; stages of language in, 157-193, 328; differences between infantile and primitive man, as regards development of speech, 329-334; order of development of articulate sounds in, 372, 373

Cicero on the origin of speech, 240

Chimpanzee. _See_ Apes

Chinese language. _See_ Language

Classification, in relation to abstraction, 31, 32; powers of, exhibited by a young child, 26, 66, 67; by lower animals generally, 27-30 (_see_ also under Precepts); of ideas, 34-39, 193; conceptual, 78-80, 174; of the animal kingdom by the early Jews and by Aristotle, 78, 79; of language, 85-89; of mental faculties artificial, 234; of languages, 245-251

Clicks of Hottentots, 291

Clothes only worn by man, 19

Communication. _See_ Language

Complex ideas. _See_ Ideas

Compound ideas. _See_ Ideas

Comte, Auguste, on the logic of feelings and of signs, 42, 46, 47

Conception. _See_ Concepts

Concepts, defined, 34; logic of, 47, and chap. iv.; as named recepts, 74, 75; as higher and lower, 76, 185; in relation to particular and generic ideas, 76-78; in relation to judgment and self-consciousness, 168-191; Max Müller’s alleged, 221; in relation to non-conceptual faculties, 234-237; attainment of, by the individual, 230-232; original, 269-281; philological proof of derivation of, from recepts, 343-349

Concrete ideas. _See_ Ideas

Connotation, 88, 89, 136, 137, 157, 159-162, 169, 170, 179-184, 218, 219, 283, 284, 294 _et seq._, 368, 383, 384

Conscience. _See_ Morality

Coptic language. _See_ Language

Copula, the, 172, 173, 230, 309, 314, 387

Counting, by rooks, 56, 57, 214, 215; by an ape, 58, 215; by sensuous computation and by separate notation, 57, 215; by savages, 215

Crawford on Malay language, 351

Cronise on the climate of California, 261

Crows, intelligence of, 56, 57

Cuvier on speech as the most distinctive characteristic of man, 371

D

Dammaras, counting by, 215

Darwin, Charles, on intelligence of savage man in relation to his cerebral development, 16, 17; on intelligence of animals, 51, 52, 54; on pointing of sporting dogs, 97; on expression of emotions, 103; on psychogenesis of child, 123, 158; on self-consciousness, 199; on descent of man, 369, 370, 374-376, 380

Dayak language. _See_ Language

Deaf-mutes, sign-making by, 105-120; ideation of, 149, 150, 339-341; invention of articulate signs by, 122, 263, 367

De Fravière on sign-making by bees, 90

Demonstrative elements. _See_ Pronouns

Denomination, 88, 89, 161, 162, 168-170, 294, _et seq._

Denotation, 88, 89, 157, 158, 159, 162, 168, 179-184, 218, 219, 294 _et seq._, 368-369, 383, 384, 386

De Quatrefages, on distinctions between animal and human intelligence, 17-19; on intelligence of a dog, 198; on poverty of savage languages in abstract terms, 351

Dog, seeking water in hollows, 51; making allowance for driftway, 52; generic ideas shown by, 54, 352; chasing imaginary pigs, 56; idea of causation shown by, 59, 60; pointing and backing of, 97, 98; other gesture signs made by, 99, 100, 221; understanding of written signs by, 101, 102; understanding of words by, 124, 125; alleged articulation by, 128; Indian sign for barking, 146; recognizing pictorial representations, 188; practising concealment and hypocrisy, 198; ejective ideation of, 198; receptual self-consciousness of, 199; counting by, 215; begging before a bitch, 221; deaf-mute’s articulate name of, 367

Donaldson on demonstrative elements, 244

_Dublin Review_ on psychology of judgment, 166, 167

Dumas, Alex., on sign-making, 111

Du Ponceau on language of savages, 349, 351

E

Ecitons. _See_ Ants

Egyptian language. _See_ Language

Elephant, intelligence of, 98

Ellis on early English pronunciation, 373

Emerson on fundamental metaphor, 344

Emotions of man and brutes compared, 7

Empty words, 246

_Encyclopædia Britannica_ (1857), on the origin of speech, 240

English language. _See_ Language

Etruscan language. _See_ Language

F

Farrar, Archdeacon, on demonstrative elements, 244; on invention of languages by children, 263; on roots of language, 268, 358; on origin of the verb, 275; on paucity of words in vocabulary of English labourers, 280; on onomatopœia, 284-288, 290; on objective phraseology of young children and early man, 301; on the substantive verb, 309; on fundamental metaphor, 344; on language of savages in respect of abstraction, 350; on absence of subjective personal pronouns in early forms of speech, 421

Feejee language. _See_ Language

Fire only made by man, 19

Fitzgerald, P. F., on self-consciousness, 212

Flight, capability of, in insects, reptiles, birds, and mammals, 156, 157

Forbes, James, on intelligence of monkeys, 100

Fox, intelligence of, 55, 56

Frogs, understanding by, of tones of human voice, 124

G

Galton, Francis, on ideas as generic images, 23; on relation of thought to speech, 83; on intelligence of Dammaras, 215

Garnett, on nature and analysis of the verb, 275, 307, 309-312; on sentence-words, 300; on primitive forms of predication, 318; on fundamental metaphor, 344, 358; on absence of subjective cases of pronouns in early forms of speech, 421

Geiger, on ideas, 45; on dependence of thought upon language, 83; on understanding of words by brutes, 127; on roots of language, 268, 273, 336; on distinction between ideas as general and generic, 279; on increasing conceptuality of terms with increase of culture, 280; on the impossibility of language having ever consisted exclusively of general terms, 282; on Heyse’s theory of the origin of speech, 289; on onomatopœia, 292; on the vanishing point of language, 314, 354; on fundamental metaphor as illustrated by names of tools, 345, 346, and words of moral significance, 346, 347; on the sense of sight in relation to the origin of speech, 366, 367; on _Homo alalus_, 380

General ideas. _See_ Ideas

Generalization. _See_ Ideas

Generic ideas. _See_ Recepts

Genitive case, philology of, 305, 385

Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, Isid., on a monkey recognizing pictorial representations, 188

Geology, imperfect record of, 19

Gesture. _See_ Language

Gibbon. _See_ Apes

Goethe on obliteration of original meanings of words, 284

Goodbehere, S., on sign-making by a pony, 97

Gorilla. _See_ Apes

Greek. _See_ Language

Green, Professor, on self-consciousness, 212

Grimace. _See_ Language

Grimm, on the origin of speech, 240; on names for thunder, 286; on fundamental metaphor, 344

H

Haeckel, Professor, on _Homo alalus_, 370, 380; on sounds made by apes, 374

Hague on sign-making by ants, 93, 94

Hale, Dr. H., on spontaneous invention of words by children, 138-144; on the origin of languages, 259-263

Hamilton, Sir William, on ideas as abstract and general, 24, 25, 79, 80

Harper, F., on Greek tenses, 301

Haughton, Sir Graves, on roots of languages, 275

Hebrew. _See_ Language

Hegel, on absence in brutes of the idea of causality, 58; on self-consciousness, 212

Heinieke on words spontaneously invented by deaf-mutes, 367

Hen, different tones used by, as signs to chickens, &c., 96

Herder, on the origin of speech, 240; on the original concretism of language, 359

Herzen on self-consciousness, 212

Heyse, on onomatopœia, 285, 287; on the origin of speech, 289; on fundamental metaphor, 344; on poverty of savage languages in abstract terms, 351

Hobbes on the copula, 172, 173

Hogg on a dog understanding words, 125

Holden on the vocabularies of children, 372, 373

_Homo._ _See_ Man

Horace on the origin of speech, 240

Horse, sign-making by, 97

Hoste, Sir W., on intelligence of monkeys, 101

Hottentots, language of, 291, 373, 374

Houzeau, on dogs seeking water in hollows, 51; on tones used by the common hen as signs, 96; on talking birds, 129, 130; on danger signals of birds, 369

Hovelacque, on demonstrative elements, 244; on auxiliary words, 247; on formulæ of language-structure, 248; on affinities of languages, 250, 255; on limitations of consonantal sounds in various languages, 373

Huber on sign-making by insects, 88-90

Human. _See_ Man

Humboldt on the origin of speech, 240

Hun, Dr. E. R., on spontaneous invention of words by young children, 140-143

Hungarian language. _See_ Language

Huxley, Professor, on importance of the evolution theory in relation to anthropology, 2, 3; on animal automatism, 11; on the brain-weight of man as compared with that of anthropoid apes, 16; on ideas, 23, 43; on importance of language to development of human thought, 134; on smallness of anatomical difference which determines or prevents power of articulation, 153, 370, 371; on psychology of judgment, 164; on erect attitude assumed by gibbon and gorilla, 381, 382

I

Icelandic language. _See_ Language

Ideas, definition and classification of, 20-39; as recepts, chap. iii.; as concepts, chap. iv.; as general and generic, 38, 39, 68, 69, 276-281, 336, 337; as abstract, 20-39, 70-80; of causation in brutes, 58-60, and in man, 210; of uneducated deaf-mutes, 149-151; psychological classification of artificial, 234-237; of savages, 337, 338, 349-353

Idiots, psychology of, 104, 105; meaningless and imitative articulation by, 121; ideation of, 152

Incorporating. _See_ Languages

Indians, sign-making by, 105-113; languages of, 249, 255, 259, 260

Indicative phase of language. _See_ Language

Indicative signs, or stage of language. _See_ Language

Indo-European languages. _See_ Languages

Infant. _See_ Child

Inflectional. _See_ Languages

Instinct, defined, 7; of man and brutes compared, 7, 8

Intellect of man and brutes compared, 9

Introspection. _See_ Self-consciousness

Isolating. _See_ Languages

J

Jackdaw, sign-making by, 97

James on language of savages, 349

Javanese language. _See_ Language

Johnson, Capt., on intelligence of monkeys, 100, 101

Jones, Sir W., on the origin of speech, 240

Judgment, unconscious or intuitive, 48, 49, 189; J. S. Mill upon, 48; psychology of, 163-237; G. H. Lewes upon, 164; Professor Huxley upon, 164; St. G. Mivart upon, 165, 166; Professor Max Müller upon, 165; in relation to recepts, concepts, and thought, 163-193; Professor Sayce upon, 170; pre-conceptual, 227-230, 278, 384, 386; blank form of, 166, 167, 319, 320

K

Khetshua language. _See_ Language

Kleinpaul on gesture language, 120

L

Landois on sign-making by bees, 90

Langley, S. P., on intelligence of a spider, 62, 63

Language, in relation to brain-weight, 16; abstraction dependent on, 25, 30-39; not always necessary to thought, 81-83; etymology and different signification of the word, 85; categories of, 85-89; as sign-making exhibited by brutes, 88-102; of tone and gesture, 104-120; articulate, spontaneously imitated by children, 138-143; of tone and gesture in relation to words, 145-162; stages of, as indicative, denotative, connotative, denominative, and predicative, 157-193; in relation to self-consciousness, 212; growth of, in child, 218-237; theories concerning origin of, in race, 238-242, 361-384; evolution of, 240-245, 264, 265; roots of, 241-245, 248, 249; differentiation of, into parts of speech, 294-320, 339-342; demonstrative elements of, 243-245; of savages deficient in abstract terms, 349-353; nursery, 365, 366; Chinese, 246, 253, 256, 257, 265, 266, 298, 300, 317, 338, 373; Magyar, 253; Turkish, 253; Basque, 258, 260, 311; Etruscan, 258; Hungarian, 259; Malay, 259, 301, 305, 311, 351; Latin, 267; Egyptian, 297, 298, 310, 311; English, 247, 259, 266, 338, 348, 373; Khetshua, 263; Hebrew, 266, 309; Greek, 301, 310, 320; Taic, 305; Sanskrit, 266-277, 301, 309, 354; Zend, 309; Lithuanic, 309; Icelandic, 309; Coptic, 310; Javanese, 311; Malagassy, 311; Philippine, 311; Syriac, 311; Dayak, 317; Feejee, 318; Cheyenne, 348; Australian, 351; Eskimo, 351; Zulu, 351; Tasmanian, 352; Kurd, 352; Japanese, 373; Hottentot, 373, 374

Languages, number of, 245; classification of, 245-251; isolating, radical, or monosyllabic, 245, 246, 267, 268; agglutinative or agglomerative, 247; inflective or transpositive, 247, 248; polysynthetic or incapsulating, 249; incorporating, 245-250; analytic, 250; affinities of, 250-259; native American, 249, 255, 259-263, 265, 311, 342, 348, 349, 351; African, 260, 263, 291, 337, 338, 351, 373, 374; Aryan and Indo-European, 266-278, 298, 304, 309, 314, 423; Semitic, 266, 311; Romance, 308; Polynesian, 318

Latham, Dr., on the growth of language, 241; on language of savages in respect of abstraction, 351, 352

Latin, roots of, 267. _See_ also Language

Laura Bridgman, her syntax, 116; her instinctive articulate sounds, 122

Lazarus, on ideas, 44, 45; on origin of speech, 361

Lee, Mrs., on talking birds, 130

Lefroy, Sir John, on intelligence of a dog, 99

Leibnitz on teaching a dog to articulate, 128

Leroy on intelligence of wolf, 53; of stag, 54, 55; of fox, 55, 56; of rooks, 56, 57

Lewes, G. H., on the logic of feelings and of signs, 47; on judgment, 164; on pre-perception, 185

Links between ape and man missing, 19

Lithuanic language. _See_ Language

Locke on ideas, 20-23, 28-30, 65, 342

Logic, of recepts, chap. iii.; of concepts, 47, and chap. iv.

Long on gesture-language, 120

Lubbock, Sir John, on communication by ants, 94, 95; on teaching a dog written signs, 101, 102

Lucretius on the origin of speech, 240

Ludwig on demonstrative elements, 244

M

Magyar language. _See_ Language

Malagassy language. _See_ Language

Malay language. _See_ Language

Malle, Dureau de la, on intelligence of brutes, 12

Mallery, Lieut.-Col., on sign-making by Indians and deaf-mutes, &c., 105-112, 117-120; on teaching a dog to articulate, 128; on sign for a barking dog, 146; on genetic relation between gestures and words, 342, 348, 349

Man, antecedent remarks on psychology of, 4-6; points of resemblance between his psychology and that of brutes, 6-10; points of difference, 10-39; intelligence of savage, 13, 16, 17, 215, 337, 338, 349-353, and of palæolithic and neolithic, 14, 213, 214; corporeal structure of, 19; animism of savage and primitive, 275; speechless, 277; differences between infantile, and infantile child as regards development of speech, 329-334; use of personal pronoun by early, 300, 301, 387-389; hypotheses as to mode of origin of, from brute, 361-389; superior use by, of the sense of sight, 366, 367; possibly speechless condition of early, 370-379

Mansel, Dean, on ideas as general and abstract, 42

Maudsley, Dr., on self-consciousness, 212

Maury on poverty of savage languages in abstract terms, 351

M’Cook, Rev. Dr., on sign-making by ants, 95

Metaphor, importance of, in evolution of speech, 343-349

Meunier, on the understanding of words by brutes, 125; on talking birds, 130

Midas, a, recognizing pictorial representations, 188

Mill, James, on the copula, 173

Mill, John Stuart, on ideas as abstract and concrete, 25; on the logic of feelings and of signs, 41, 42; on judgment, 48; on connotation and denomination, 169; on conception, 172; on the copula, 173; on predication, 236

Milligan on poverty of savage languages in abstract terms, 352

Mind, undergoes evolution, 4-6; of man and brute compared, 7-39; classification of faculties of artificial, 234

Missing links, 19

Mivart, St. George, on psychology of brutes, 10, 177; on animal automatism, 11; on superiority of savage mind to simian, 16; on absence in brutes of the idea of causality, 58; on relation of thought to speech, 83; on categories of language, 85, 86; on rationality of brutes, 87; on psychology of judgment, 165-167; on thought and reflection, 177, 178

Mixed ideas. _See_ Ideas

Moffat, R., on invention of languages by children, 263

Monboddo on the origin of speech, 240

Monkeys, general intelligence of, 60, 61, 100, 101; discovering mechanical principles, 60, 61, 213, 214; more intelligent and imitative than parrots, 153; recognizing pictorial representations, 188; understanding words, 369; using stones to open oysters, 382

Monosyllabic. _See_ Languages

Morality, alleged to distinguish man from brute, 17-19, 346; terms relating to, derived from ideas morally indifferent, 346, 347

Morshead, E. J., on comparative psychology, 37

Moschkan, Dr. A., on talking birds, 130

Müller, F., on sign-making by bees, 90

Müller, J., on absence in brutes of the idea of causality, 58

Müller, Professor Friedrich, on ideas, 45; on language, as not identical with thought, 83; on classification of languages, 245; on sentence-words, 296; on undifferentiated language of child, 297; on origin of pronouns, 302; on the genitive case, 305; on the origin of speech, 362

Müller, Professor F. Max, on ideas, 42, 43; on language as necessary to thought, 81, 83; on psychology of judgment, 165; on the copula, 173; on origin of the personal pronoun, 210; on evolution of language, 241; on demonstrative elements, 244, 423; on roots of Sanskrit, 267-289; on undifferentiated language of young children, 296, 317; on sentence-words, 298-300, 317; on gesture origin of pronouns, 302, and of language in general, 354; on origin of adjectives, 306; on the origin of verbs, 307; on Chinese sentence-words, 317; on Aristotle’s logic as based on Greek grammar, 320, 321; on philology proving that human thought has proceeded from the abstract to the concrete, 334-336; on names necessarily implying concepts, 336, 337; on fundamental metaphor, 344, 345; on imperfection of early names, 356; on the evolution of parts of speech, 423; on the general theory of evolution, 432, 433

N

Names, in relation to abstract and generic ideas, 31, 32, 57, 58, 70-78, 174, 273-281, 336-339; not always necessary for thoughts, 81-83; or thoughts for them, 226, 336-339

Natterer, J., on the languages of Brazil, 263

Negro, intelligence of, 13; Mr. Mivart’s use of the term to illustrate the psychology of predication, 166, 235

Neuter insects, instincts of, 297-299

Nodier, on onomatopœia, 288; on metaphor, 344

Noiré, on ideas, 43; on the origin of speech, 288, 289, 379-381; on the origin of pronouns, 302; on fundamental metaphor, 344, 345

Nominalism, 145

Noun-substantives, appropriately used by parrots, 129, 152; early use of, by children, 218; of earlier linguistic growth than verbs or pronouns, 275; not differentiated in early forms of speech, 295 _et seq._; oblique cases of, as attribute-words, 306, 385

O

Onomatopœia, in nursery-language, 136, 244; in relation to the origin of speech, 282-293, 339

Orang-outang. _See_ Apes

Oregon, climate and native languages of, 262

P

Palæontology. _See_ Geology

Parrots, talking of, 128-138; use of indicative signs by, 158; denotative and connotative powers of, 179-191, 222-226; statements made by, 189, 190

Particular ideas. _See_ Ideas

Parts of speech, differentiation of language into, 294-320, 339-342, 423

Peckham, Mr. and Mrs., on memory in a spider, 207

Perception, analogies between reason and, 32; constituted by fusions of sensations, 37; in relation to other mental faculties, 48; illusions of, 49

Perez on psychogenesis of the child, 26, 41, 158, 210

Philippine language. _See_ Language

Philology. _See_ Language

Pickering on poverty of savage languages in abstract terms, 352

Pictures recognized as portraits, &c., by infants, dogs, and monkeys, 188, 189

Pig taught to point game, 97

Poescher on the Aryan race, 273

Pointing, game by a pig, 97; of setter-dogs, 97, 98; as the first stage of language, 157, 158

Polynesian languages. _See_ Languages

Polysynthetic. _See_ Languages

Pony, sign-making by, 97

Pott, on the origin of speech, 240; on language-roots, 267; on names for thunder, 286; on fundamental metaphor, 344

Powers on the climate of California, 261

Pre-concepts, 185-193, 218, 219, 227-230, 278, 384, 386

Predicate, the, 305, 306, 423

Predication, 88, 89, 157, 162-164, 169, 171, 175, 227, 235-237, 294 _et seq._, 384, 386, 387, 422

Prepositions not differentiated in early forms of speech, 295 _et seq._

Preyer, on psychogenesis of the child, 26, 219, 221, 222; on sensuous computation of number, 57, 58

Primates. _See_ Apes _and_ Monkeys

Pritchard on Celtic languages, 275

Progress in successive generations, 12-15

Pronoun, first personal, 201, 232, 301, 387-389, 408, 409

Pronouns and pronominal elements, 210, 275; not differentiated in early forms of speech, 295 _et seq._; origin of, in gestures, 301-304, 387, 421, 422

Proposition. _See_ Predication

Psychogenesis. _See_ Child

Psychology. _See_ Mind

Q

Quadrumana. _See_ Apes _and_ Monkeys

R

Radical. _See_ Languages

Ray on different tones used by the common hen, 96

Reason in relation to perception, 32; to sensation, 37; and to other mental faculties in general, 48

Recepts, defined, 36-39; logic of, 40-69; recognized by previous writers, 40-45; in relation to the intellectual faculties, 48-50, 234; examples of, in the animal kingdom, 51-63; as primitive as percepts, 64-69; of water-fowl, 74; in relation to judgment and self-consciousness, 176-193; as higher and lower, 184-193; counting by, 214, 215; naming by, 218, 219; of the framers of Sanskrit, 277-279; philologically prior to concepts, 343-349

Reflection in relation to reflex action, 48. _See also_ Thought

Reflex action, 48

Religion alleged to distinguish man from brute, 17, 19, 346

Renan on roots of Hebrew, 266

Rengger on different tones uttered by the cebus, 96

Reptiles, understanding by, of tones of human voice, 124

Ribot, Professor, on self-consciousness, 212

Richter on obliteration of the original meanings of words, 284

Romance languages. _See_ Languages

Romanes, on teaching an ape to count, 58; on intelligence of cebus, 60, 61; on sign-making by caterpillars, 95, 96; on pointing of setter-dogs, 97, 98; on sign-making by other dogs, 100, 221; on infant intelligence, 122, 159, 160, 188, 189, 218-220, 232, 283, 324; on dogs and apes understanding words, 124-126; on talking birds, 129, 130; on ideation of deaf-mutes, 149, 150

Rooks, intelligence of, 56, 57

Roots of language. _See_ Language

S

Sandwith on poverty of savage languages in abstract terms, 352

Sanskrit. _See_ Language

Sayce, Professor, on differences of degree and kind, 3; on terms as abbreviated judgments, 170; on the number of languages, 245; on the affinities between languages, 250-259; on monosyllabic origin of language, 268; on civilization of the Aryan race, 272; on antiquity of the Aryan race, 273; on rarity of general terms in savage languages, 280; on onomatopœia, 286; on the clicks in the language of Hottentots, etc., 291, 373, 374; on sentence-words, 299, 300, 303; on the origin of pronouns, 302; on the genitive case, the predicate, and the attribute, 305, 306, 313, 423; on the evolution of nouns, adjectives, and verbs, 308; on Aristotle’s logic as based on Greek grammar, 321; on deficiency of savage languages in abstract terms, 352; on Noiré’s theory of the origin of speech, 380

Schelling on parts of speech, 295, 296

Schlegel on the origin of speech, 240

Schleicher, on evolution of language, 241; on formulæ of language-structure, 248

Scott, Dr., on psychology of idiots and deaf-mutes, 104, 105, 115, 116, 121

Scott, Sir Walter, on a dog understanding words, 125

Self-consciousness, condition to introspective reflection or thought, 175; absent in brutes, 175, 176; genesis of, 194-212; philosophy and psychology of, 194, 195; character of, in man and in brutes, 195-212; as inward and outward, or receptual and conceptual, 199, 200; growth of, in child, 200-212, 228, 229-234

Semitic. _See_ Languages

Sensation in relation to perception and reason, 37; and to other mental faculties in general, 48

Sentence and sentence-words, 296 _et seq._

Sicard, Abbé, on syntax of gesture-language, 116

Sight, superior use of sense of, by man, 366, 367

Signs and sign-making. _See_ Language

Simple ideas. _See_ Ideas

Skeat, Professor, on Aryan roots of English, 266

Skinner, Major, on intelligence of elephants, 98

Smith, Rev. S., on ideation of deaf-mutes, 150

Snakes, understanding by, of tones of human voice, 124

Solomon, quoted, 195

Somnambulism in animals, 149

Speech. _See_ Language

Spider, intelligence of, 62, 63, 153, 207

Steinthal, on ideas, 45; first issue of his _Zeitschrift_, 240; on roots of language, 277; on onomatopœia, 286; on primitive forms of predication, 318

Stephen, Leslie, on intelligence of the dog, 54

Stephen, Sir James, on dependence of thought upon language, 85

Street, A. E., on vocabulary of a young child, 143, 144

Substantive. _See_ Noun _and_ Verb

Sullivan, Sir J., on talking birds, 130

Sully, J., on ideas, 40, 41; on illusions of perception, 49; on rise of self-consciousness in the growing child, 201-203, 207, 210, 212

Sweet, on animistic thought of primitive man, 275; on the evolution of grammatical forms, 306, 315, 316

Syntax, of gesture-language, 107-120; of different spoken languages, 246, 247; of gesture-language in relation to that of early speech, 339-342, 385

Syriac language. _See_ Language

T

Taine, on psychogenesis of the child, 26, 66, 67, 180, 181; on abstract ideas, 31, 32; on self-consciousness, 212

Thought, distinguished from reason, 12; absent in brutes, 29, 30; dependent on language, 30, 31; simplest element of, 165, 174, 215, 216; animistic, of primitive and savage man, 275; not necessary to naming, 226, 336-339

Toads, understanding by, of tones of human voice, 124

Tone. _See_ Language

Tools, said to be only used by man, 19; names of, derived from activities requiring only natural organs, 345-347; used by monkeys, 382

Threlkeld on language of savages, 349

Transposition. _See_ Languages

Tschudi, Baron von, on the Khetshua language, 262, 263

Turkish language. _See_ Language

Tylor, on sign-making by Indians and deaf-mutes, 105-108, 113-117; on articulate sounds instinctively made by deaf-mutes, 122; on ideation of deaf-mutes, 150

V

Varro on roots of Latin, 267

Verbs, appropriately used by parrots, 130, 152; substantive, 167, 308-312; early use of, by children, 219; early origin of, 274; not differentiated in early forms of speech, 295 _et seq._; development of, 275, 307, 308, 385, 386

Voice. _See_ Language

Volition of man and brutes compared, 8

W

Waitz, Professor, on self-consciousness, 212; on the sentence as the unit of language, 296

Wallace, A. R., on intelligence of savage man in relation to his cerebral development, 15, 16

Ward on the descent of man, 365

Wasps, sign-making by, 88-90

Watson on understanding of words by brutes, 125

Wedgwood, on roots of language, 268; on onomatopœia, 288

Westropp, H. M., on intelligence of a bear, 51

Whitney, Professor, on dependence of thought upon words, 83; on superiority of voice to gesture in sign-making, 147, 148; on our ignorance of polysynthetic languages, 255, 256; on monosyllabic origin of language, 267; on civilization of the Aryan race, 272; on the growth of language, 290; on priority of words to sentences, 333, 334; on fundamental metaphor, 343; on the possibly speechless condition of primitive man, 369

Wildman on bees understanding tones of human voice, 124

Wilkes, Dr. S., on talking birds, 131, 132, 136

Will. _See_ Volition

Wolf, intelligence of, 53

Wright, Chauncey, on language in relation to brain-weight, 16; on self-consciousness, 199, 206, 207, 212

Wundt, Professor, on latent period in seeing and hearing, 146; on self-consciousness, 197, 200, 201, 208, 211, 212; on evolution of language, 265; on the distinction between ideas as general and generic, 279, 280; on onomatopœia, 287, 291; on objective phraseology of primitive speech, 301; on sentence-words, 304

Y

Youatt on a pig being taught to point game, 97

Z

Zend language. _See_ Language

Zoological affinity between man and brute, 19

FOOTNOTES:

[1] _Man’s Place in Nature_, p. 59.

[2] It is perhaps desirable to explain from the first that by the words “difference of kind,” as used in the above paragraph and elsewhere throughout this treatise, I mean difference of _origin_. This is the only real distinction that can be drawn between the terms “difference of kind” and “difference of degree;” and I should scarcely have deemed it worth while to give the definition, had it not been for the confused manner in which the terms are used by some writers—_e.g._ Professor Sayce, who says, while speaking of the development of languages from a common source, “differences of degree become in time differences of kind” (_Introduction to the Science of Language_, ii. 309).

[3] See _Mental Evolution in Animals_, chapter on the Emotions.

[4] _Mental Evolution in Animals_, p. 159. “The term is a generic one, comprising all the faculties of mind which are concerned in conscious and adaptive action, antecedent to individual experience, without necessary knowledge of the relation between means employed and ends attained, but similarly performed under similar and frequently recurring circumstances by all individuals of the same species.”

[5] Of course my opponents will not allow that this word can be properly applied to the psychology of any brute. But I am not now using it in a question-begging sense: I am using it only to avoid the otherwise necessary expedient of coining a new term. Whatever view we may take as to the relations between human and animal psychology, we must in some way distinguish between the different ingredients of each, and so between the instinct, the emotion, and the intelligence of an animal. See _Mental Evolution in Animals_, p. 335, et seq.

[6] If any one should be disposed to do so, I can only reply to him in the words of Professor Huxley, who puts the case tersely and well:—“What is the value of the evidence which leads one to believe that one’s fellow-man feels? The only evidence in this argument from analogy is the similarity of his structure and of his actions to one’s own, and if that is good enough to prove that one’s fellow-man feels, surely it is good enough to prove that an ape feels,” etc. (_Critiques and Addresses_, p. 282). To this statement of the case Mr. Mivart offers, indeed, a criticism, but it is one of a singularly feeble character. He says, “Surely it is not by similarity of structure or actions, but by _language_ that men are placed in communication with one another.” To this it seems sufficient to ask, in the first place, whether language is not action; and, in the next, whether, as expressive of _suffering_, articulate speech is regarded by us as more “eloquent” than inarticulate cries and gestures?

[7] Of course where the term Reason is intended to signify Introspective Thought, the above remarks do not apply, further than to indicate the misuse of the term.

[8] I here neglect to consider the view of Bishop Butler, and others who have followed him, that animals may have an immortal principle as well as man; for, if this view is maintained, it serves to identify, not to separate, human and brute psychology. The dictum of Aristotle and Buffon, that animals differ from man in having no power of mental apprehension, may also be disregarded; for it appears to be sufficiently disposed of by the following remark of Dureau de la Malle, which I here quote as presenting some historical interest in relation to the theory of natural selection. He says: “Si les animaux n’étaient pas suscéptibles d’apprendre les moyens de se conserver, les espèces se seraient anéanties.”

[9] John Fiske, _Excursions of an Evolutionist_, pp. 42, 43 (1884).

[10] _Natural Selection_, p. 343. It will subsequently appear, as a general consequence of our investigation of savage psychology, that of these two opposite opinions the one advocated by Mr. Mivart is best supported by facts. But I may here adduce one or two considerations of a more special nature bearing upon this point. First, as to cerebral _structure_, the case is thus summed up by Professor Huxley:—“The difference in weight of brain between the highest and the lowest man is far greater, both relatively and absolutely, than that between the lowest man and the highest ape. The latter, as has been seen, is represented by, say 12 ounces of cerebral substance absolutely, or by 32:20 relatively; but, as the largest recorded human brain weighed between 65 and 66 ounces, the former difference is represented by more than 33 ounces absolutely, or by 65:32 relatively. Regarded systematically, the cerebral differences of man and apes are not of more than generic value—his family distinction resting chiefly on his dentition, his pelves, and his lower limbs” (_Man’s Place in Nature_, p. 103). Next, concerning cerebral _function_, Mr. Chauncey Wright well remarks:—“A psychological analysis of the faculty of language shows that even the smallest proficiency in it might require more brain power than the greatest proficiency in any other direction” (_North American Review_, Oct. 1870, p. 295). After quoting this, Mr. Darwin observes of savage man, “He has invented and is able to use various weapons, tools, traps, &c., with which he defends himself, kills or catches prey, and otherwise obtains food. He has made rafts or canoes for fishing, or crossing over to neighbouring fertile islands. He has discovered the art of making fire.... These several inventions, by which man in the rudest state has become so preeminent, are the direct results of the development of his powers of observation, memory, curiosity, imagination, and reason. I cannot, therefore, understand how it is that Mr. Wallace maintains that ‘natural selection could only have endowed the savage with a brain a little superior to that of an ape’” (_Descent of Man_, pp. 48, 49).

[11] _The Human Species_, English trans., p. 22.

[12] Sundry other and still more special distinctions of a psychological kind have been alleged by various writers as obtaining between man and the lower animals—such as making fire, employing barter, wearing clothes, using tools, and so forth. But as all these distinctions are merely particular instances, or detailed illustrations, of the more intelligent order of ideation which belongs to mankind, it is needless to occupy space with their discussion. Here, also, I may remark that in this work I am not concerned with the popular objection to Darwinism on account of “missing-links,” or the absence of fossil remains structurally intermediate between those of man and the anthropoid apes. This is a subject that belongs to palæontology, and, therefore, its treatment would be out of place in these pages. Nevertheless, I may here briefly remark that the supposed difficulty is not one of any magnitude. Although to the popular mind it seems almost self-evident that if there ever existed a long series of generations connecting the bodily structure of man with that of the higher apes, at least some few of their bones ought now to be forthcoming; the geologist too well knows how little reliance can be placed on such merely negative testimony where the record of geology is in question. Countless other instances may now be quoted of connecting links having been but recently found between animal groups which are zoologically much more widely separated than are apes and men. Indeed, so destitute of force is this popular objection held to be by geologists, that it is not regarded by them as amounting to any objection at all. On the other hand, the close anatomical resemblance that subsists between man and the higher apes—every bone, muscle, nerve, vessel, etc., in the enormously complex structure of the one coinciding, each to each, with the no less enormously complex structure of the other—speaks so voluminously in favour of an uninterrupted continuity of descent, that, as before remarked, no one who is at all entitled to speak upon the subject has ventured to dispute this continuity so far as the corporeal structure is concerned. All the few naturalists who still withhold their assent from the theory of evolution in its reference to man, expressly base their opinion on those grounds of psychology which it is the object of the present treatise to investigate.

[13] In my previous work I devoted a chapter to “Imagination,” in which I treated of the psychology of ideation so far as animals are concerned. It is now needful to consider ideation with reference to man; and, in order to do this, it is further needful to revert in some measure to the ideation of animals. I will, however, try as far as possible to avoid repeating myself, and therefore in the three following chapters I will assume that the reader is already acquainted with my previous work. Indeed, the argument running through the three following chapters cannot be fully appreciated unless their perusal is preceded by that of chapters ix. and x. of _Mental Evolution in Animals_.

[14] _Human Understanding_, bk. ii., chap. ii., 10, 11. To this passage Berkeley objected that it is impossible to form an abstract idea of quality as apart from any concrete idea of object; _e.g._ an idea of motion distinct from that of any body moving. (See _Principles of Human Knowledge_, Introd. vii.-xix.). This is a point which I cannot fully treat without going into the philosophy of the great discussion on Nominalism, Realism, and Conceptualism—a matter which would take me beyond the strictly psychological limits within which I desire to confine my work. It will, therefore, be enough to point out that Berkeley’s criticism here merely amounts to showing that Locke did not pursue sufficiently far his philosophy of Nominalism. What Locke did was to see, and to state, that a general or abstract idea embodies a perception of likeness between individuals of a kind while disregarding the differences; what he failed to do was to take the further step of showing that such an idea is not an idea in the sense of being a mental image; it is merely an intellectual symbol of an actually impossible existence, namely, of quality apart from object. Intellectual symbolism of this kind is performed mainly through the agency of verbal or other conventional signs (as we shall see later on), and it is owing to a clearer understanding of this process that Realism was gradually vanquished by Nominalism. The only difference, then, between Locke and Berkeley here is, that the nominalism of the former was not so complete or thorough as that of the latter. I may remark that if in the following discussion I appear to fail in distinctly setting forth the doctrine of nominalism, I do so only in order that my investigation may avoid needless collision with conceptualism. For myself I am a nominalist, and agree with Mill that to say we think in concepts is only another way of saying that we think in class names.

[15] This simile has been previously used by Mr. Galton himself, and also by Mr. Huxley in his work on Hume.

[16] Hence, the only valid distinction that can be drawn between abstraction and generalization is that which has been drawn by Hamilton, as follows: “Abstraction consists in concentration of attention upon a particular object, or particular quality of an object, and diversion of it from everything else. The notion of the _figure_ of the desk before me is an abstract idea—an idea that makes part of the total notion of that body, and on which I have concentrated my attention, in order to consider it exclusively. This idea is abstract, but it is at the same time individual: it represents the figure of this particular desk, and not the figure of any other body.” Generalization, on the other hand, consists in an ideal compounding of abstractions, “when, comparing a number of objects, we seize on their resemblances; when we concentrate our attention on these points of similarity.... The general notion is thus one which makes us know a quality, property, power, notion, relation, in short, any point of view under which we recognize a plurality of objects as a unity.” Thus, there may be abstraction without generalization; but inasmuch as abstraction has then to do only with particulars, this phase of it is disregarded by most writers on psychology, who therefore employ abstraction and generalization as convertible terms. Mill says, “By _abstract_ I shall always, in Logic proper, mean the opposite of _concrete_; by an abstract name the name of an attribute; by a concrete name, the name of an object” (_Logic_, i. § 4). Such limitation, however, is arbitrary—it being the same kind of mental act to “concentrate attention upon a particular _object_,” as it is to do so upon any “particular _quality_ of an object.” Of course in this usage Mill is following the schoolmen, and he expressly objects to the change first introduced (apparently) by Locke, and since generally adopted. But it is of little consequence in which of the two senses now explained a writer chooses to employ the word “abstract,” provided he is consistent in his own usage.

[17] The age here mentioned closely corresponds with that which is given by M. Perez, who says:—“At seven months he compares better than at three; and he appears at this age to have visual perceptions associated with ideas of _kind_: for instance, he connects the different flavours of a piece of bread, of a cake, of fruit, with their different forms and colours” (_First Three Years of Childhood_, English trans., p. 31).

[18] _Die Seele des Kindes_, s. 87.

[19] Taine, _Intelligence_, p. 18.

[20] _Human Understanding_, bk. ii., ch. ii., §§ 5-7.

[21] If required, proof of this fact is to be found in abundance in the chapter on “Imagination,” _Mental Evolution in Animals_, pp. 142-158. It is there shown that imagination in animals is not dependent only on associations aroused by sensuous impressions from without, but reaches the level of carrying on a train of mental imagery _per se_.

[22] _Loc. cit._, pp. 397-399. Allusion may also be here conveniently made to an interesting and suggestive work by another French writer, M. Binet (_La Psychologie du Raisonnement_, 1886). His object is to show that all processes of reasoning are fundamentally identical with those of perception. In order to do this he gives a detailed exposition of the general fact that processes of both kinds depend on “fusions” of states of consciousness. In the case of perception the elements thus fused are sensations, while in the case of reasoning they are perceptions—in both cases the principle of association being alike concerned.

[23] _Mental Evolution in Animals_, p. 118.

[24] In this connection I may quote the following very lucid statements from a paper by the Secretary of the Victoria Institute, which is directed against the general doctrine that I am endeavouring to advance, _i.e._ that there is no distinction of kind between brute and human psychology.

“Abstraction and generalization only become intellectual when they are utilized by the intellect. A bull is irritated by a red colour, and not by the object of which redness is a property; but it would be absurd to say that the bull voluntarily abstracts the phenomenon of redness from these objects. The process is essentially one of abstraction, and yet at the same time it is essentially automatic.” And with reference to the ideation of brutes in general, he continues:—“Certain qualities of an object engage his attention to the exclusion of other qualities, which are disregarded; and thus he abstracts automatically. The image of an object having been imprinted on his memory, the feelings which it excited are also imprinted on his memory, and on the reproduction of the image these feelings and the actions resulting therefrom are reproduced, likewise automatically: thus he acts from experience, automatically still. The image may be the image of the same object, or the image of another object of the same species, but the effect is the same, and thus he generalizes, automatically also.” Lastly, speaking of inference, he says:—“This method is common to man and brute, and, like the faculties of abstraction, &c., it only becomes intellectual when we choose to make it so.” (E. J. Morshead, in an essay on _Comparative Psychology_, _Journ. Vic. Inst._, vol. v., pp. 303, 304, 1870.) In the work of M. Binet already alluded to, the distinction in question is also recognized. For he says that the “fusion” of sensations which takes place in an act of perception is performed automatically (_i.e._ is receptual); while the “fusion” of perceptions which are concerned in an act of reason is performed intentionally (_i.e._ is conceptual).

[25] The more elaborate analysis of German psychologists has yielded five orders instead of three; namely, _Wahrnehmung_, _Anschauung_, _Vorstellungen_, _Erfahrungsbegriff_, and _Verstandesbegriff_. But for the purposes of this treatise it is needless to go into these finer distinctions.

[26] _Outlines of Psychology_, p. 342. The italics are mine. It will be observed that Mr. Sully here uses the term “generic” in exactly the sense which I propose.

[27] _First Three Years of Childhood_, English trans., pp. 180-182.

[28] _Examination of Hamilton’s Philosophy_, p. 403.

[29] To this, Max Müller objects on account of its veiled conceptualism—seeing that it represents the “notion” as chronologically prior to the “name” (_Science of Thought_, p. 268). With this criticism, however, I am not concerned. Whether “the many pictures” which the mind thus forms, and blends together into what Locke terms a “compound idea,” deserve, when so blended, to be called “a general notion” or a “concept”—this is a question of terminology of which I steer clear, by assigning to such compound ideas the term recepts, and reserving the term notions, or concepts, for compound ideas _after they have been named_.

[30] _Logos_, p. 175, quoted by Max Müller, who adds:—“The followers of Hume might possibly look upon the faded images of our memory as abstract ideas. Our memory, or, what is often equally important, our oblivescence, seems to them able to do what abstraction, as Berkeley shows, never can do; and under its silent sway many an idea, or cluster of ideas, might seem to melt away till nothing is left but a mere shadow. These shadows, however, though they may become very vague, remain percepts; they are not concepts” (_Science of Thought_, p. 453). Now, I say it is equally evident that these shadows are _not_ percepts: they are the result of the _fusion_ of percepts, no one of which corresponds to their generic sum. Seeing, then, that they are neither percepts nor concepts, and yet such highly important elements in ideation, I coin for them the distinctive name of recepts.

[31] _Life of Hume_, p. 96.

[32] Steinthal and Lazarus, however, in dealing with the problem touching the origin of speech, present in an adumbrated fashion this doctrine of receptual ideation with special reference to animals. For instance, Lazarus says, “Es gibt in der gewöhnlichen Erfahrung kein so einfaches Ding von einfacher Beschaffenheit, dass wir es durch _eine_ Sinnesempfindung wahrnehmen könnten; erst aus der Sammlung seiner Eigenschaften, d. h. erst aus der _Verbindung_ der mehreren Empfindungen ergibt sich _die Wahrnehmung eines Dinges_: erst indem wir die weisse Farbe sehen, die Härte fühlen und den süssen Geschmack empfinden, erkennen wir ein Stück Zucker” (_Das Leben der Seele_ (1857), 8, ii. 66). This and other passages in the same work follow the teaching of Steinthal; _e.g._ “Die Anschauung von einem Dinge ist der Complex der sämmtlichen Empfindungserkenntnisse, die wir von einem Dinge haben ... die Anschauung ist eine Synthesis, aber eine unmittelbare, die durch die Einheit der Seele gegeben ist.” And, following both these writers, Friedrich Müller says, “Diese Sammlung und Einigung der verschiedenen Empfindungen gemäss der in den Dingen verbundenen Eigenschaften heisst Anschauung” (_Grundriss der Sprachwissenschaft_, i. 26). On the other hand, their brother philologist, Geiger, strongly objects to this use of the term _Anschauung_, under which, he says, “wird theils etwas von der Sinneswahrnehmung gar nicht Unterschiedenes verstanden, theils auch ein dunkles Etwas, welches, ohne dass die Bedingungen und Ursachen zu erkennen sind, die Einheit der Wahrnehmungen zu kleineren und grössern Complexen bewirken soll.... So dass ich eine solche ‘Synthesis’ nicht auch bei dem Thiere ganz ebenso wie bei dem Menschen voraussetze: ich glaube im Gegentheile, dass es sich mit der Sprache erst entwickelt” (_Ursprung der Sprache_, 177, 178). Now, I have quoted these various passages because they serve to render, in a brief and instructive form, the different views which may be taken on a comparatively simple matter owing to the want of well-defined terms. No doubt the use of the term _Anschauung_ by the above writers is unfortunate; but by it they appear to me clearly to indicate a nascent idea of what I mean by a recept. They all three fail to bring out this idea in its fulness, inasmuch as they restrict the powers of non-conceptual “synthesis” to a grouping of simple perceptions furnished by different sense-organs, instead of extending it to a synthesis of syntheses of perceptions, whether furnished by the same or also by different senses. But these three philologists are all on the right psychological track, and their critic Geiger is quite wrong in saying that there can be no synthesis of (non-conceptual) ideas without the aid of speech. As a matter of fact the _dunkles Etwas_ which he complains of his predecessors as importing into the ideation of animals, is an _Etwas_ which, when brought out into clearer light, is fraught with the highest importance. For, as we shall subsequently see, it is nothing less than the needful psychological condition to the subsequent development both of speech and thought. The term _Apperception_ as used by some German psychologists is also inclusive of what I mean by receptual ideation. But as it is also inclusive of conceptual, nothing would here be gained by its adoption. Indeed F. Müller expressly restricts its meaning to conceptual ideation, for he says, “Alle psychischen Processe bis einschliesslich zur Perception lassen sich ohne Sprache ausführen und vollkommen begreifen, die Apperception dagegen lässt sich nur an der Hand der Sprache denken” (_loc. cit._ i., 29).

[33] As stated in a previous foot-note, this truth is well exhibited by M. Binet, _loc. cit._

[34] The word Logic is derived from λόγος, which in turn is derived from λέδω, to arrange, to lay in order, to pick up, to bind together.

[35] The terms Logic of Feelings and Logic of Signs were first introduced and extensively employed by Comte. Afterwards they were adopted, and still more extensively employed by Lewes, who, however, seems to have thought that he so employed them in some different sense. To me it appears that in this Lewes was mistaken. Save that Comte is here, as elsewhere, intoxicated with theology, I think that the ideas he intended to set forth under these terms are the same as those which are advocated by Lewes—although his incoherency justifies the remark of his follower:—“Being unable to understand this, I do not criticize it” (_Probs. of Life and Mind_, iii., p. 239). The terms in question are also sanctioned by Mill, as shown by the above quotation (p. 42).

[36] _Mental Evolution in Animals_, p. 62.

[37] Special attention, however, may be drawn to the fact that the term “unconscious judgment” is not metaphorical, but serves to convey in a technical sense what appears to be the precise psychology of the process. For the distinguishing element of a judgment, in its technical sense, is that it involves an element of _belief_. Now, as Mill remarks, “when a stone lies before me, I am conscious of certain sensations which I receive from it; but if I say that these sensations come to me from an external object which I perceive, the meaning of these words is, that receiving the sensations, I intuitively believe that an external cause of those sensations exists” (_Logic_, i., p. 58). In cases, such as that mentioned in the text, where the “unconscious judgment” is wrong—_i.e._ the perception illusory—it may, of course, be over-ridden by judgment of a higher order, and thus we do not end by believing that the bowl is a sphere. Nevertheless, so far as it is dependent on the testimony of our senses, the mind judges erroneously in perceiving the bowl as a sphere. In his work on _Illusions_, Mr. Sully has shown that illusions of perception arise through the mental “application of a rule, valid for the majority of cases, to an exceptional case.” In other words, an erroneous judgment is made by the non-conceptual faculties of perception—this judgment being formed upon the analogies supplied by past experience. Of course, such an act of merely perceptual inference is not a judgment, strictly so called; but it is clearly _allied_ to judgment, and convenience is consulted by following established custom in designating it “unconscious,” “intuitive,” or “perceptual judgment.”

[38] _Descent of Man_, p. 76.

[39] See _Animal Intelligence_, pp. 465, 466.

[40] Of course the words “general idea” and “concept” here are open to that psychological objection for the avoidance of which I have coined the terms generic idea and recept.

[41] In my previous works I have already quoted facts of animal intelligence narrated by this author, but not any of those which I am now about to use.

[42] _Intelligence of Animals_, English trans., p. 20.

[43] _Ibid._, p. 107. This identical illustration appears to have occurred independently both to Mr. Darwin and Mr. Leslie Stephen. All these writers use the terms “abstract” and “general” as above; but, of course, as shown in my last chapter, this is merely a matter of terminology—in my opinion, however, objectionable, because appearing to assume, without analysis, that the ideation of brutes and of men is identical in kind.

[44] _Ibid._, pp. 43, 44.

[45] _Ibid._, p. 39.

[46] _Ibid._, p. 30. In the present connection, also, I may refer to the chapter on Imagination in my previous work, where sundry illustrations are given of this faculty as it occurs in animals; for wherever imagination leads to appropriate action, there is evidence of a Logic of Recepts, which in the higher levels of imagination, characteristic of man, passes into a Logic of Concepts.

Since publishing the chapter just alluded to, I have received an additional and curious illustration of the imaginative faculty in animals, which I think deserves to be published for its own sake. Of course we may see in a general way that dogs and cats resemble children in their play of “pretending” that inanimate objects are alive, and this betokens a comparatively high level of the imaginative faculty. The case which I am about to quote, however, appears to show that this kind of imaginative play may extend in animals, as in children, to the still higher level of not only pretending that inanimate objects are alive, but of “peopling space with fancy’s airy forms.” I shall quote the facts in the words of my correspondent, who is Miss Bramston, the authoress.

“_Watch_ is a collie dog belonging to the Archbishop of Canterbury; but lives with me a good deal, as Lambeth does not suit him. He is a very remarkable dog in many ways, which I will not inflict on you. He is very intelligent, understands many words, and can perform tricks. What I mention him for, however, is that he is the only dog I ever met with a dramatic faculty. His favourite drama is chasing imaginary pigs. He used now and then to be sent to chase real pigs out of the field, and after a time it became a custom for Miss Benson to open the door for him after dinner in the evening, and say, ‘Pigs!’ when he always ran about, wildly chasing imaginary pigs. If no one opened the door, he went to it himself wagging his tail, asking for his customary drama. He now reaches a further stage, for as soon as we get up after our last meal he begins to bark violently, and if the door is open he rushes out to chase imaginary pigs with no one saying the word ‘pigs’ at all. He usually used to be sent out to chase pigs after prayers in the evening, and when he came to my small house it was amusing to see that he recognized the function of prayers, performed with totally different accompaniments, to be the same as prayers performed in an episcopal chapel, so far as he expected ‘Pigs’ to be the end of both. The word ‘Pigs,’ uttered in any tone, will always set him off playing the same drama.”

[47] _Ibid._, pp. 125, 126.

[48] Professor Preyer has ascertained experimentally the number of objects (such as shot-corns, pins, or dots on a piece of paper), which admit of being simultaneously estimated with accuracy. (_Sitzungs berichten der Gesellschaft für Medicin und Naturwissenshaft_, 29 Juli, 1881.) The number admits of being largely increased by practice, until, with an exposure to view of one second’s duration, the estimate admits of being correctly made up to between twenty and thirty objects. (See also _Mental Evolution in Animals_, p. 138.)

[49] _Lessons from Nature_, pp. 219, 220.

[50] See _Animal Intelligence_, pp. 422-424.

[51] I may here observe that the earliest age in the infant at which I have observed such appreciation of causality to occur is during the sixth month. With my own children at that age I noticed that if I made a knocking sound with my concealed foot, they would look round and round the room with an obvious desire to ascertain the cause that was producing the sound. Compare, also, _Mental Evolution in Animals_, pp. 156-158, on emotions aroused in brutes by sense of the _mysterious_—_i.e._ the _unexplained_.

[52] The reader is referred to the whole biography of this monkey (_Animal Intelligence_, pp. 484-498) for a number of other facts serving to show to how high a level of intelligent grouping—or of “logic”—recepts may attain without the aid of concepts. In the same connection I may refer to the chapter on “Imagination” in _Mental Evolution in Animals_, and also to the following pages in _Animal Intelligence_:—128-40; 181-97, 219-222, 233, 311-335, 337, 338, 340, 348-352, 377-385, 397-410, 413-425, 426-436, 445-470, 478-498.

[53] Taine, _On Intelligence_, pp. 16, 17.

[54] _Lectures_, vol. ii., p. 290.

[55] _Science of Thought_, p. 35. For his whole argument, see pp. 30-64.

[56] _Ursprung der Sprache_, s. 91.

[57] _Grundriss der Sprachwissenshaft_, i., s. 16. It will be observed that there is an obvious analogy between the process above described, whereby conceptual ideation becomes degraded into receptual, and that whereby, on a lower plane of mental evolution, intelligence becomes degraded into instinct. In my former work I devoted many pages to a consideration of this subject, and showed that the condition to intelligent adjustments thus becoming instinctive is invariably to be found in frequency of repetition. Instincts of this kind (“secondary instincts”) may be termed degraded recepts, just as the recepts spoken of in the text are degraded concepts; neither could be what it now is, but for its higher parentage. Any one who is specially interested in the question whether there can be thought without words, may consult the correspondence between Prof. Max Müller, Mr. Francis Galton, myself, and others, in _Nature_, May and June, 1887 (since published in a separate form); between the former and Mr. Mivart, in _Nature_, March, 1888. Also an article by Mr. Justice Stephen in the _Nineteenth Century_, April, 1888. Prof. Whitney has some excellent remarks on this subject in his _Language and the Study of Language_, pp. 405-411.

[58] From this it will be seen that by using such terms as “inference,” “reason,” “rational,” &c., in alluding to mental processes of the lower animals, I am in no way prejudicing the question as to the distinction between man and brute. In the higher region of recepts both the man and the brute attain in no small degree to a perception of analogies or relations: this is inference or ratiocination in its most direct form, and differs from the process as it takes place in the sphere of conceptual thought only in that it is not itself an object of knowledge. But, considered as a process of inference or ratiocination, I do not see that it should make any difference in our terminology whether or not it happens to be itself an object of knowledge. Therefore I do not follow those numerous writers who restrict such terms to the higher exhibitions of the process, or to the ratiocination which is concerned only with introspective thought. It may be a matter of straw-splitting, but I think it is best to draw our distinctions where the distinctions occur; and I cannot see that it modifies the process of inference, as inference, whether or not the mind, in virtue of a superadded faculty, is able to think about the process as a process—not any more, for instance, than the process of association is altered by its becoming itself an object of knowledge. Therefore, I hope I have made it clear that in maintaining the rationality of brutes I am not arguing for anything more than that they have the power, as Mr. Mivart himself allows, of drawing “practical inferences.” Hitherto, then, my difference with Mr. Mivart—and, so far as I know, with all other modern writers who maintain the irrationality of brutes—is only one of terminology.

[59] See _Animal Intelligence_, p. 158.

[60] _Animal Intelligence_, pp. 114-116.

[61] Kreplin, quoted by Büchner.

[62] The best instances of sign-making among Invertebrata other than the Hymenoptera which I have met with is one that I have myself observed and already recorded in _Mental Evolution in Animals_ (p. 343, note). The animal is the processional caterpillar. These larvæ migrate in the form of a long line, crawling Indian file, with the head of the one touching the tail of the next in the series. If one member of the series be removed, the next member in advance immediately stops and begins to wag its head in a peculiar manner from side to side. This serves as a signal for the next member also to stop and wag his head, and so on till all the members in front of the interruption are at a standstill, all wagging their heads. But as soon as the interval is closed up by the advance of the rear of the column, the front again begins to move forward, when the head-wagging ceases.

[63] _Fac. Ment. des Animaux_, tom. ii., p. 348.

[64] Darwin, _Descent of Man_, pp. 84, 85.

[65] _Nature_, April 10, 1884, pp. 547, 548.

[66] For information on all these points, see Darwin, _Expression of the Emotions_.

[67] Quoted by Tylor, _Early History of Mankind_, p. 80.

[68] Burton, _City of the Saints_, p. 151.

[69] _Loc. cit._, p. 78.

[70] _Sign-language among the North American Indians, &c._, by Lieut.-Col. Garrick Mallery (_First Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, Washington_, 1881).

[71] Mallery, _loc. cit._, p. 320. The author gives several very interesting records of such conversations, and adds that the mutes show more aptitude in understanding the Indians than _vice versâ_, because to them “the ‘action, action, action,’ of Demosthenes is their only oratory, and not a heightening of it, however valuable.”

[72] _Loc. cit._, p. 39.

[73] See especially Tylor, _loc. cit._, pp. 28-30, where an interesting account is given of the elaborate and yet self-speaking signs whereby an adult deaf-mute gave directions for the drawing up of his will.

[74] _Early History of Mankind_, pp. 24-32.

[75] _Loc. cit._, p. 54.

[76] Further information of a kind corroborating what has been given in the foregoing chapter concerning gesture-language may be found in Long’s _Expedition to the Rocky Mountains_, and Kleinpaul’s paper in _Völkerpsychologie_, _&c._, vi. 352-375. The subject was first dealt with in a philosophical manner by Leibnitz, in 1717, _Collectanea Etymologia_, ch. ix.

[77] For meaningless articulation by idiots, see Scott’s _Remarks on Education of Idiots_. The fact is alluded to by most writers on idiot psychology, and I have frequently observed it myself. But the case of uneducated deaf-mutes is here more to the purpose. I will, therefore, furnish one quotation in evidence of the above statement. “It is a very notable fact bearing upon the problem of the Origin of Language, that even born-mutes, who never heard a word spoken, do of their own accord and without any teaching make vocal sounds more or less articulate, to which they attach a definite meaning, and which, when once made, they go on using afterwards in the same unvarying sense. Though these sounds are often capable of being written down more or less accurately with our ordinary alphabets, this effect on those who make them can, of course, have nothing to do with the sense of hearing, but must consist only in particular ways of breathing, combined with particular positions of the vocal organs” (Tylor, _Early History of Mankind_, p. 72, where see for evidence). The instinctive articulations of Laura Bridgman (who was blind as well as deaf) are in this connection even still more conclusive (see _ibid._, pp. 74, 75).

[78] Writers on infant psychology differ as to the time when words are first understood by infants. Doubtless it varies in individual cases, and is always more or less difficult to determine with accuracy. But all observers agree—and every mother or nurse could corroborate—that the understanding of many words and sentences is unmistakable long before the child itself begins to speak. Mr. Darwin’s observations showed that in the case of his children the understanding of words and sentences was unmistakable between the tenth and twelfth months.

[79] See _Animal Intelligence_: for Fish, p. 250; for Frogs and Toads, p. 225; for Snakes, p. 261; for Birds and Mammals in various parts of the chapters devoted to these animals. The case quoted on the authority of Bingley regarding the tame bees of Mr. Wildman, which he had taught to obey words of command (p. 189), would, if corroborated, carry the faculty in question into the invertebrated series.

[80] Although the ages at which talking proper begins varies much in different children, it may be taken as a universal rule—as stated in the last foot-note—that words, and even sentences, are understood long before they are intelligently articulated; although, as previously remarked, even before any words are _understood_ meaningless syllables may be spontaneously or instinctively articulated.

[81] See, for instance, Watson’s _Reasoning Power in Animals_, pp. 137-149, and Meunier’s _Les Animaux Perfectibles_, ch. xii.

[82] _Ursprung der Sprache_, p. 122.

[83] Some cases are on record of dogs having been taught to articulate. Thus the thoughtful Leibnitz vouches for the fact (which he communicated to the _Académie Royale_ at Paris, and which that body said they would have doubted had it not been observed by so eminent a man), that he had heard a peasant’s dog distinctly articulate thirty words, which it had been taught to say by the peasant’s son. The _Dumfries Journal_, January, 1829, mentions a dog as then living in that town, who uttered distinctly the word “William,” which was the name of a person to whom he was attached. Again, Colonel Mallery writes:—“Some recent experiments of Prof. A. Graham Bell, no less eminent from his work in artificial speech than in telephones, shows that animals are more physically capable of pronouncing articulate sounds than has been supposed. He informed the writer that he recently succeeded by manipulation in causing an English terrier to form a number of the sounds of our letters, and particularly brought out from it the words ‘How are you, grandmama,’ with distinctness.” As I believe that the barrier to articulation in dogs is anatomical and not psychological, I regard it as merely a question of observation whether this barrier may not in some cases be partly overcome; but, as far as the evidence goes, I think it is safer to conclude that the instances mentioned consisted in the animals so modulating the tones of their voices as to resemble the sounds of certain words.

[84] Mr. Darwin writes:—“It is certain that some parrots, which have been taught to speak, connect unerringly words with things, and persons with events. I have received several detailed accounts to this effect. Admiral Sir J. Sullivan, whom I know to be a careful observer, assures me that an African parrot, long kept in his father’s house, invariably called certain persons of the household, as well as visitors, by their names. He said ‘Good morning’ to every one at breakfast, and ‘Good night’ to each as they left the room at night, and never reversed these salutations. To Sir J. Sullivan’s father he used to add to the ‘good morning’ a short sentence, which was never repeated after his father’s death. He scolded violently a strange dog which came into the room through an open window, and he scolded another parrot (saying, ‘You naughty polly!’), which had got out of its cage, and was eating apples on the kitchen table. Dr. A. Moschkan informs me that he knew a starling which never made a mistake in saying in German ‘good morning’ to persons arriving, and ‘good-bye, old fellow’ to those departing. I could add several other cases” (_Descent of Man_, p. 85). Similarly Houzeau gives some instances of nearly the same kind (_Fac. Ment. des Anim._, tom, ii., p. 309, _et seq._); and Mrs. Lee, in her _Anecdotes_ records several still more remarkable cases (which are quoted by Houzeau), as does also M. Meunier in his recently published work on _Les Animaux Perfectibles_. In my own correspondence I have received numerous letters detailing similar facts, and from these I gather that parrots often use comical phrases when they desire to excite laughter, pitiable phrases when they desire to excite compassion, and so on; although it does not follow from this that the birds understand the meanings of these phrases, further than that they are as a whole appropriate to excite the feelings which it is desired to excite. I have myself kept selected parrots, and can fully corroborate all the above statements from my own observations.

[85] _Journal of Mental Science_, July, 1879.

[86] This term has been previously used by some philologists to signify ejaculation by man. It will be observed that I use it in a more extended sense.

[87] _Man’s Place in Nature_, p. 52. I may here appropriately allude to a paper which elicited a good deal of discussion some years ago. It was read before the Victoria Institute in March, 1872, by Dr. Frederick Bateman, under the title “Darwinism tested by Recent Researches in Language;” and its object was to argue that the faculty of articulate speech constitutes a difference of kind between the psychology of man and that of the lower animals. This argument Dr. Bateman sought to establish, first on the usual grounds that no animals are capable of using words with any degree of understanding, and, second, on grounds of a purely anatomical kind. In the text I fully deal with the first allegation: as a matter of fact, many of the lower animals understand the meanings of many words, while those of them which are alone capable of imitating our articulate sounds not unfrequently display a correct appreciation of their use as signs. But what I have here especially to consider is the anatomical branch of Dr. Bateman’s argument. He says:—“As the remarkable similarity between the brain of man and that of the ape cannot be disputed, if the seat of human speech could be positively traced to any particular part of the brain, the Darwinian could say that, although the ape could not speak, he possessed the germ of that faculty, and that in subsequent generations, by the process of evolution, the ‘speech centre’ would become more developed, and the ape would then speak.... If the scalpel of the anatomist has failed to discover a _material locus habitandi_ for man’s proud prerogative—the faculty of Articulate Language; if science has failed to trace speech to a ‘material centre,’ has failed thus to connect matter with mind, I submit that speech is the barrier between men and animals, establishing between them a difference not only of degree but of kind; the Darwinian analogy between the brain of man and that of his reputed ancestor, the ape, loses all its force, whilst the common belief in the Mosaic account of the origin of man is strengthened.” Now, I will not wait to present the evidence which has fully satisfied all living physiologists that “the faculty of Articulate Language” has “a _material locus habitandi_;” for the point on which I desire to insist is that it cannot make one iota of difference to “the Darwinian analogy” whether this faculty is restricted to a particular “speech-centre,” or has its anatomical “seat” distributed over any wider area of the cerebral cortex. Such a “seat” there must be in either case, if it be allowed (as Dr. Bateman allows) that the cerebral cortex “is undoubtedly the instrument by which this attribute becomes externally manifested.” The question whether “the material organ of speech” is large or small cannot possibly affect the question on which we are engaged. Since Dr. Bateman wrote, a new era has arisen in the localization of cerebral functions; so that, if there were any soundness in his argument, one would now be in a position immensely to strengthen “the Darwinian analogy;” seeing that physiologists now habitually utilize the brains of monkeys for the purpose of analogically localizing the “motor centres” in the brain of man. In other words, “the Darwinian analogy” has been found to extend in physiological, as well as in anatomical detail, throughout the entire area of the cortex. But, as I have shown, there is no soundness in his argument; and therefore I do not avail myself of these recent and most wonderfully suggestive results of physiological research.

[88] I may, however, add the following corroborative observations, as they have not been previously published. I owe them to the kindness of my friend Mr. A. E. Street, who kept a diary of his children’s psychogenesis. When about two years of age one of these children possessed the following vocabulary:—

Af-ta (in imitation of the sound which the nurse used to make when pretending to drink) = _drinking_ or a _drink_, _drinking-vessel_, and hence a _glass_ of any kind.

Vy = a _fly_.

Vy-’ta = _window_, _i.e._ the ‘ta or af-ta (_glass_) on which a fly walks.

Blow = _candle_.

Blow-hattie = a _lamp_, _i.e._ candle with a hat or shade.

’Nell = a _flower_, _i.e._ smell.

These words are clearly all of imitative origin. The following, however, seem to have been purely arbitrary:—

Numby = _food_ of any kind (onomatopoetic).

Nunny = _dress_ of any kind.

Milly = _dressing_, and any article used in dressing, _e.g._ a pin.

Lee = _the name for her nurse_, though no one else called the woman by any other name than nurse.

Diddle-iddle = _a hole_; hence _a thimble_; hence _a finger_.

Wasky = _the sea_.

Bilu-bilu = _the printed character_ “&,” invented on learning the first letters of her alphabet, and always afterwards used.

[89] Touching the comparative rapidity with which signs admit of being made to the eye and ear respectively, it may be pointed out that there is a physiological reason why the latter should have the advantage; for while the ear can distinguish successive sensations separated only by an interval of .016 sec., the eye cannot do so unless the interval is more than .047 sec. (Wundt).

[90] _Encyclop. Brit._, 9th ed., art. _Philology_.

[91] It will be remembered that in a previous chapter I argued the impossibility of estimating the reflex influence of speech upon gesture, in the case of the high development attained by the latter in man. In the text I am now considering the converse influence of gesture upon speech, and find that it is no more easy precisely to estimate. There can be no doubt, however, that the reciprocal influence must have been great in both directions, and that it must have proceeded from gesture to speech in the first instance, and afterwards, when the latter had become well developed as a system of auditory signs, from speech to gesture. More will require to be said upon this point in a future chapter.

[92] “The remark made by Tiedemann on the imperative intention of tears, is confirmed by similar observations of Charles Darwin’s. At the age of eleven weeks, in the case of one of his children, a little sooner in another, the nature of their crying changed according to whether it was produced by hunger or suffering. And this means of communication appeared to be very early placed at the service of the will. The child seemed to have learnt to cry when he wished, and to contract his features according to the occasion, so as to make known that he wanted something. This development of the will takes place towards the end of the third month.” (Perez, _First Three Years of Childhood_, English trans., p. 101.)

[93] Several writers of repute have habitually used the word “Judgment” in a most unwarrantable manner—Lewes, for instance, making it stand indifferently for an act of sensuous determination and an act of conceptual thought. I may, therefore, here remark that in the following analysis I shall not be concerned with any such gratuitous abuses of the term, but will understand it in the technical sense which it bears in logic and psychology. The extraordinary views which Mr. Huxley has published upon this subject I can only take to be ironical. For instance, he says:—“Ratiocination is resolvable into predication, and predication consists in marking in some way the existence, the co-existence, the succession, the likeness and unlikeness, of things or their ideas. Whatever does this, reasons; and I see no more ground for denying to it reasoning power, because it is unconscious, than I see for refusing Mr. Babbage’s engine the title of a calculating machine on the same grounds” (_Critiques and Addresses_, p. 281). If this statement were taken seriously, of course the answer would be that Mr. Babbage’s engine is called a calculating machine only in a metaphorical sense, seeing that it does not evolve its results by any process at all resembling, or in any way analogous to, those of a human mind. It would be an absurd misstatement to say that a machine either reasons or predicates, _only_ because it “marks in some way the existence, the co-existence, the succession, and the likeness and unlikeness of things.” A rising barometer or a striking clock do not predicate, any more than a piece of wood, shrieking beneath a circular saw, feels. To denominate purely mechanical or unconscious action—even though it should take place in a living agent and be perfectly adjustive—reason or predication, would be to confuse physical phenomena with psychical; and, as I have shown in my previous work, even if it be supposed that the latter are mere “indices” or “shadows” of the former, _still the fact of their existence must be recognized_; and the processes in question have reference to them, not to their physical counterparts. It is, therefore, just as incorrect to say that a calculating machine really calculates, or predicates the result of its calculations, as it would be to say that a musical-box composes a tune because it plays a tune, or that the love of Romeo and Juliet was an isosceles triangle, because their feelings of affection, each to each, were, like the angles at the base of that figure, equal. But, as I have said, I take it that Professor Huxley must here have been writing in some ironical sense, and therefore purposely threw his criticisms into a preposterous form.

[94] The “images answering respectively to ‘a thing being,’ and ‘a thing not being,’ and to ‘at the same time’ and ‘in the same sense,’” must indeed be “vague.” How is it conceivable that “the imagination” can entertain any such “images” at all, apart from the “abstract ideas” of the “mind”? Such ideas as “a thing not being,” or “being in the same sense,” &c., belong to the sphere of conceptual thought, and cannot have any existence at all except as “abstract ideas of the mind.”

[95] _Nature_, August 21, 1879.

[96] The statement conveyed in this sentence I am not able to understand, and therefore will not hereafter endeavour to criticize. If it be taken literally—and I know not in what other sense to take it—we must suppose the writer to mean that “greenness” only occurs in “grass,” or, which is the same thing, that only grass is green.

[97] _Lessons from Nature_, pp. 226, 227.

[98] For instance, Professor Francis Bowen, of Harvard College, in an essay on _The Human and Brute Mind_, _Princeton Review_, 1880.

[99] Mill, following the schoolmen, uses the terms connotation and denomination as synonymous. For the distinction which I have drawn between them see above, p. 162.

[100] Sayce, _Introduction to the Science of Language_, i., 115.

[101] This view of a concept as already embodying the idea of existence is not really opposed to that of Mill, where he points out that if we pronounce the word “Sun” alone we are not necessarily affirming so much as existence of the sun (_Logic_, i., p. 20); for, although we are not affirming existence of that particular body, we must at least have the idea of its existence _as a possibility_: the use of the term carries with it the implied idea of such a possibility, and therefore the idea of existence—whether actual or potential—as already present to the mind of the speaker.

[102] In order to avoid misapprehension, I may observe that the criticism which Mill passes upon this analysis of the proposition by Hobbes (_Logic_, i., p. 100) has no reference to the only matter with which I am at present concerned—namely, the function of the copula. Indeed, with regard to this matter I am in full agreement with both the Mills. For James Mill, see _Analysis of the Human Mind_, i. 126, _et seq._; Mr. John Stuart Mill writes as follows:—“It is important that there should be no indistinctness in our conception of the nature and office of the copula; for confused notions respecting it are among the causes which have spread mysticism over the field of logic, and perverted its speculations into logomachies. It is apt to be supposed that the copula is something more than a mere sign of predication; that it also signifies existence. In the proposition, Socrates is just, it may seem to be implied not only that the quality _just_ can be affirmed of Socrates, but moreover that Socrates _is_, that is to say exists. This, however, only shows that there is an ambiguity in the word _is_; a word which not only performs the function of a copula in affirmations, but has also a meaning of its own, in virtue of which it may itself be made the predicate of a proposition” (_Logic_, i., p. 86). In my chapters on Philology I shall have to recur to the analysis of predication, and then it will be seen how completely the above view has been corroborated by the progress of linguistic research.

[103] Of course concepts may be something more than mere recepts known as such: they may be the knowledge of other concepts. But with this higher stage of conceptual ideation I am not here concerned.

[104] _Nature_, August 21, 1879.

[105] Taine, _Intelligence_, pp. 399, 400.

[106] Or, as we may now more closely define it, a denominated recept. A merely denotated recept (such as a parrot’s name for its recept of dog) is not conceptual, even in the lowest degree. In other words, named recepts, merely as such, are not necessarily concepts. Whether or not they are concepts depends on whether the naming has been an act of denotation or of denomination—conscious only, or likewise _self_-conscious.

[107] I coin this word on the pattern already furnished by “pre-perception,” which was first introduced by Lewes, and is now in general use among psychologists.

[108] Touching the power of recognizing pictorial representations among animals, this unquestionably occurs in dogs (see _Animal Intelligence_, pp. 455, 456), and there is some evidence to show that it is likewise displayed by monkeys. For Isidore Geoffroy St. Hilaire relates of a species of Midas (_Corinus_) that it distinguished between different objects depicted on an engraving; and Audouin “showed it the portraits of a cat and a wasp, at which it became much terrified: whereas, at the sight of a figure of a grasshopper or a beetle, it precipitated itself on the picture, as if to seize the objects there represented” (Bates, _Nat. on Amaz._, p. 60). The age at which a young child first learns to recognize pictorial resemblances no doubt varies in individual cases. I have not met with any evidence on this subject in the writings of other observers of infant psychology. The earliest age at which I observed any display of this faculty in my own children was at eight months, when my son stared long and fixedly at my own portrait in a manner which left no doubt on my mind that he recognized it as resembling the face of a man. Moreover, always after that day when asked in that room, “Where’s papa?” he used at once to look up and point at the portrait. Another child of my own, which had not seen this portrait till she was sixteen months old, immediately recognized it at first sight, as was proved by her pointing to it and calling it “Papa.” Two months later I observed that she also recognized pictorial resemblances of animals, and for many months afterwards her chief amusement consisted in looking through picture-books for the purpose of pointing out the animals or persons depicted—calling “Ba-a-a” to the sheep, “Moo” to the cows, grunting for the pigs, &c., these sundry sounds having been taught her as names by the nurse. She never made a mistake in this kind of nomenclature, and spontaneously called all pictorial representations of men “Papa,” of women “Mama,” and of children “Ilda”—the latter being the name which she had given to her younger brother. Moreover, if a picture-book were given into her hands upside-down, she would immediately perceive and rectify the mistake; and whenever she happened to see a pictorial representation of an animal—as, for instance, on a screen or wall-paper—she would touch it and utter the sound that was her name for that animal. With a third child, who was still wholly speechless at eighteen months, I tried the experiment of spreading out a number of photographic portraits, and asking him “Which is mamma? Which is papa?” &c. Without any hesitation he indicated them all correctly.

[109] By using the word “judgment” in all these cases I am in no way prejudicing the argument of my opponents. The explanation which immediately follows in the text is sufficient to show that the qualifying terms “receptual” and “pre-conceptual” effectually guard against any abuse of the term—quite as much, for instance, as when psychologists speak of “perceptual judgments,” or “unconscious judgments,” or “intuitive judgments,” in connection with still lower levels of mental operation. And it seems to me better thus to qualify an existing term than to add to the already large number of words I have found it necessary to coin.

[110] I may here remark that this possibility of receptual predication on the part of talking birds is not entirely hypothetical: I have some evidence that it may be actually realized. For instance, a correspondent writes of a cockatoo which had been ill:—“A friend came the same afternoon, and asked him how he was. With his head on one side and one of his cunning looks, he told her that he was ‘a little better;’ and when she asked him if he had not been very ill, he said, ‘Cockie better; Cockie ever so much better.’ ... ‘When I came back (after a prolonged absence) he said, ‘Mother come back to little Cockie: Mother come back to little Cockie. Come and love me and give me pretty kiss. Nobody pity poor Cockie. The boy beat poor Cockie.’ He always told me if Jes scolded or beat him. He always told me as soon as he saw me, and in such a pitiful tone.... The remarkable thing about this bird is that he does not merely ‘talk’ like parrots in general, but so habitually _talks to the purpose_.”

[111] Lest there should still be any ambiguity about the numerous terms which I have found it necessary to coin, I will here supply a table of definitions.

Lower recept = an automatic grouping of percepts.

Higher recept = pre-concept; or a degree of receptual ideation which does not occur in any brute.

Lower concept = named recept, provided that the naming be due to reflective thought.

Higher concept = a named compound of concepts.

The analogues of these terms are, in the matter of naming:—

Receptual naming = denotation, which includes pre-conceptual naming.

Conceptual naming = denomination.

And, in the matter of judging, the analogues are:—

Receptual judgment = automatic, “practical,” or unthinking inference.

Pre-conceptual judgment = the higher, though still unthinking, inferences of a child prior to the rise of self-consciousness.

Conceptual judgment = true judgment, whether exhibited in denomination, predication, or any act of inference for which self-conscious thought may be required.

[112] See above, Chapters II. and IV.

[113] See _Mental Evolution in Animals_, chapter on “Imagination.”

[114] In the opinion of Wundt, the most important of all conditions to the genesis of self-consciousness is given by the muscular sense in acts of voluntary movement (_Vorlesungen über die Menschen und Thierseele_, 18 vol.). While agreeing with him that this is a highly important condition, I think the others above mentioned are quite as much, or even more so.

[115] See for cases of this, _Animal Intelligence_, pp. 410, 443, 444, 450-452, 458, 494.

[116] The following is a good example of ejective ideation in a brute—all the better, perhaps, on account of being so familiar. I quote it from Quatrefage’s _Human Species_, pp. 20, 21:—“I must here beg permission to relate the remembrance of my struggles with a mastiff of pure breed and which had attained its full size, remaining, however, very young in character. We were very good friends and often played together. As soon as ever I assumed an attitude of defence before him, he would leap upon me with every appearance of fury, seizing in his mouth the arm which I had used as a shield. He might have marked my arm deeply at the first onset, but he never pressed it in a manner that could inflict the slightest pain. I often seized his lower jaw with my hand, but he never used his teeth so as to bite me. And yet the next moment the same teeth would indent a piece of wood I tried to tear away from them. This animal evidently knew what it was doing when it feigned the passion precisely opposite to that which it really felt; when, even in the excitement of play, it retained sufficient mastery over its movements to avoid hurting me. In reality it played a part in a comedy, and we cannot act without being conscious of it.”

[117] Not, however, wholly so. Mr. Chauncey Wright has clearly recognized the existence of what I term receptual self-consciousness, and assigned to it the name above adopted—_i.e._ “outward self-consciousness.” See his _Evolution of Self-consciousness_. Mr. Darwin, also, appears to have recognized this distinction, in the following passage:—“It may be freely admitted that no animal is self-conscious, if by this term is implied that he reflects on such points as whence he comes or whither he will go, or what is life and death, and so forth. But how can we feel sure that an old dog with an excellent memory and some power of imagination, as shown by his dreams, never reflects on his past pleasures or pains in the chase? And this would be a form of self-consciousness” (_Descent of Man_, p. 83). Of course a psychologist may take technical exception to the word “reflects” in this passage; but that this kind of receptual reflection does take place in dogs appears to me to be definitely proved by the facts of home-sickness and pining for absent friends, above alluded to.

[118] In the present connection the following very pregnant sentence may be appropriately quoted from Wundt:—“Wenn wir überall auf die Empfindung als Ausgangspunkt der ganzen Entwicklungsreihe hingewiesen werden, so _müssen_ auch die Anfänge jener Unterscheidung des Ichs von den Gegenständen schon in den Empfindungen gelegen sein” (_Vorlesungen über die Menschen und Thierseele_, i. 287). And to the objection that there can be no thought without knowledge of thought, he replies that before there is any knowledge of thought there must be the same order of thinking as there is of perceiving prior to the advent of self-consciousness—_e.g._ receptual ideas about space before there is any conceptual knowledge of these ideas as such.

[119] Sully, _loc. cit._, p. 376. See also Wundt, _loc. cit._, i. 289. He shows that this speaking of self in the third person is not due to “imitation,” but, on the contrary, opposed to it. For “a thousand times the child hears that its elders do not thus speak of themselves.” The child hears that its elders call it in the third person, and in this it follows them. But such imitation as we here find is expressive only of the fact that hitherto the child has not distinguished between self as an object and self as a subject. Only later on, when this distinction has begun to dawn, does imitation proceed to apply to the self the first person, after the manner in which other selves (now recognized by the child as such) are heard to do.

[120] _Loc. cit._, p. 377.

[121] _Loc. cit._, pp. 435, 436.

[122] _Philosophical Discussions_, p. 256. See also _Animal Intelligence_, pp. 269, 270, for the case of a parrot apparently endeavouring to recover the memory of a particular word in a phrase. In the course of an interesting research on the intelligence of spiders (_Journ. Morphol._, i., p. 383-419), Mr. and Mrs. Peckham have recently found that the memory of eggs which have been withdrawn from the mother is retained by her for a period varying in different species from less than one to more than two days.

[123] Sully, _loc. cit._, p. 377.

[124] Wundt, _loc. cit._, ii. 289, 290. He gives cases where such a definite memory of the moment has persisted, and elsewhere states that such is the case in his own experience. The circumstance which here was connected with the sudden birth of self-consciousness consisted in rolling down stairs into a cellar—an event which no doubt was well calculated forcibly to impress upon infant consciousness that it was itself, and nobody else.

[125] See _Mental Evolution in Animals_, pp. 161-165. Perez records analogous facts with regard to the infant as unmistakably displayed in the fourteenth week (_First Three Years of Childhood_, English trans., p. 29).

[126] _Outlines of Psychology_, p. 378.

[127] _Vorlesungen_, _&c._, i. 289.

[128] In the above sketch of the principles which are concerned in the development of self-consciousness, I have only been concerned with the matter on the side of its psychology, and even on this side only so far as my own purposes are in view. Those who wish for further information on the psychology of the subject may consult Wundt, _loc. cit._; Sully, _loc. cit._, and _Illusions_, ch. x.; Taine, _On Intelligence_, pt. ii., bk. iii.; Chauncey Wright, _Evolution of Self-consciousness_; and Waitz, _Lehrbuch der Psychologie_, 58. On the side of its physiology and pathology Taine, Maudsley, and Ribot may be referred to (_On Intelligence_, _Pathology of Mind_, _Diseases of Memory_), as also a paper by Herzen, entitled, _Les Modifications de la Conscience du moi_ (_Bull. Soc. Hand. Sc. Nat._, xx. 90). _An Essay on the Philosophy of Self-consciousness_, by P. F. Fitzgerald, is written from the side of metaphysics. On this side, also, we are met by the school of Hegel and the Neo-Kantians with a virtual denial of the origin and development of self-consciousness in time. Thus, for instance, Green expressly says:—“Should the question be asked, If this self-consciousness is not derived from nature, what then is its origin? the answer is, that it has no origin. It never began because it never was not. It is the condition of there being such a thing as beginning or end. Whatever begins or ends does so for it, or in relation to it” (_Prolegomena to Ethics_, p. 119). To this I can only answer that for my own part I feel as convinced as I am of the fact of my self-consciousness itself that it had a beginning in time, and was afterwards the subject of a gradual development. “Das Ich ist ein Entwicklungsprodukt, wie der ganze Mensch ein Entwicklungsprodukt ist” (Wundt).

[129] “Of all the neolithic implements the axe was by far the most important. It was by the axe that man achieved his greatest victory over nature” (Boyd Dawkins, _Early Man in Britain_, p. 274).

[130] Galton, _Tropical South Africa_, p. 213. The author adds, “Once, while I watched a Dammara floundering hopelessly in a calculation on one side of me, I observed Dinah, my spaniel, equally embarrassed on the other. She was overlooking half a dozen of her new-born puppies, which had been removed two or three times from her, and her anxiety was excessive, as she tried to find out if they were all present, or if any were still missing. She kept puzzling and running her eyes over them, backwards and forwards, but could not satisfy herself. She evidently had a vague notion of counting, but the figure was too large for her brain. Taking the two as they stood, dog and Dammara, the comparison reflected no great honour on the man.” As previously stated, I taught the chimpanzee “Sally” to give one, two, three, four, or five straws at word of command.

[131] The boy’s name was Ernest, and was thus called by all other members of the household. As I could not find any imitative source of the dissimilar name used by his sister, this is probably an instance of the spontaneous invention of names by young children, which has already been considered at the close of my chapter on “Articulation.” Touching the use of adjectives by young children, I may quote the following remark from Professor Preyer:—“A very general error must be removed, which consists in the supposition that all children on first beginning to speak use substantives only, and later pass on to the use of adjectives. This is certainly not the case.” And he proceeds to give instances drawn from the daily observations of his own child, such as the use of the word “heiss” in the twenty-third month.

[132] We shall subsequently see that at this stage of mental evolution there is no well-defined distinction between the different parts of speech. Therefore here, and elsewhere throughout this chapter, I use the terms “noun,” “adjective,” “verb,” &c., in a loose and general sense.

[133] I have seen a terrier of my own (who habitually employed this gesture-sign in the same way as Preyer’s child, namely, as expressive of desire), assiduously though fruitlessly “beg” before a refractory bitch.

[134] Many dogs will significantly bark, and cats significantly mew, for things which they desire to possess or to be done. For significant crying by children, see above, p. 158.

[135] For the case of the ape in this connection see above, p. 126. I took my daughter when she was seven years of age to witness the understanding of the ape “Sally.” On coming away, I remarked to her that the animal seemed to be “quite as sensible as Jack”—_i.e._ her infant brother of eighteen months. She considered for a while, and then replied, “Well, I think she is sensibler.” And I believe the child was right.

[136] Or, if any opponent were to suggest this, he would be committing argumentative surrender. For the citadel of his argument is, as we know, the faculty of conception, or the distinctively human power of objectifying ideas. Now, it is on all hands admitted that this power is impossible in the absence of self-consciousness. Will it, then, be suggested that my daughter had attained to self-consciousness and the introspective contemplation of her own ideas before she had attained to the faculty of speech, and therefore to the very _condition_ to the naming of her ideas? If so, it would follow that there may be concepts without names, and thus the whole fortress of my opponents would crumble away.

[137] See pp. 81-83, where it is shown that even in cases where conceptual thought is necessary for the original formation of a name, the name may afterwards be used without the agency of such thought—just in the same way as actions originally due to intelligence may, by frequent repetition, become automatic. At the close of the present chapter it will be shown that the same is true even of full or formal predication.

[138] In this connection it is interesting to observe the absence of the copula. Notwithstanding the strongly imitative tendencies of a child’s mind, and notwithstanding that our English children hear the copula expressed in almost every statement that is made to them, their own propositions, while still in the preconceptual phase, dispense with it (see above, p. 204). In thus trusting to apposition alone, without expressing any sign of relation, the young child is conveying in spoken language an immediate translation of the mental acts concerned in predication. As previously noticed, we meet with precisely the same fact in the natural language of gesture, even after this has been wrought up into the elaborate conceptual systems of the Indians and deaf-mutes. Lastly, in a subsequent chapter we shall see that the same has to be said of all the more primitive forms of spoken language which are still extant among savages. So that here again we meet with additional proof, were any required, of the folly of regarding the copula as an essential ingredient of a proposition.

[139] See p. 166.

[140] Thus far, it will be observed, the case of predication is precisely analogous to that of denomination, alluded to in the foot-note on page 226. Just as instincts may arise by way of “lapsed intelligence,” so may originally conceptual names, and even originally conceptual propositions, become worn down by frequent use, until they are, as it were, degraded into the pre-conceptual order of ideation. Be it observed, however, that the paragraphs which _follow_ in the text have reference to a totally different principle—namely, that there may be propositions strictly conceptual as to form, which, nevertheless, need never at any time have been conceptual as to thought.

[141] _Logic_, vol. i., p. 108.

[142] _Encyclopædia Britannica_, eighth edition, 1857, Art. “Language.”

[143] Of course in classical times, when there was no theological presumption against the theory of development, this alternative met with a fuller recognition; as, for example, by the Latin authors, Horace, Lucretius, and Cicero. Before that time Greek philosophers had been much exercised by the question whether speech was an intuitive endowment (analogists), or a product of human invention (anomalists); and, earlier still, astonishing progress had been made by the grammarians of India in a truly scientific analysis of language-growth. But in the text I am speaking of modern times; and here I think there can be no doubt that till the middle of the present century the possibility of language having been the result of a natural growth was not sufficiently recognized. Among those who did recognize it, Herder, Monboddo, Sir W. Jones, Schlegel, Bopp, Humboldt, Grimm, and Pott, are most deserving of mention. The same year that witnessed the publication of the _Origin of Species_ (1859), gave to science the first issue of Steinthal’s _Zeitschrift für Völkerpsychologie und Sprachwissenschaft_. From that date onwards the theory of evolution in its application to philology has held undivided sway.

[144] _Encycl. Brit._, _loc. cit._ Remembering that the above was published two years before the _Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection_, this clear enunciation of the struggle for existence in the field of philology appears to me deserving of notice.

[145] _Science of Thought_, preface, p. xi.

[146] _Darwinism tested by the Science of Language_, p. 41.

[147] There is a difference of opinion among philologists as to the extent in which modifying constants were themselves originally roots. The school of Ludwig regards demonstrative elements as never having enjoyed existence as independent words; but, even so, they must have had an independent existence of some kind, else it is impossible to explain how they ever came to be employed as constantly modifying different roots in the same way. Moreover, as Max Müller well observes, “to suppose that Khana, Khain, Khanana, Khaintra, Khatra, &c., all tumbled out ready-made, without any synthetical purpose, and that their differences were due to nothing but an uncontrolled play of the organs of speech, seems to me an unmeaning assertion.... What must be admitted, however, is that many suffixes and terminations had been wrongly analyzed by Bopp and his school, and that we must be satisfied with looking upon most of them as in the beginning simply demonstrative and modificatory” (_loc. cit._, pp. 224 and 225). See also Farrar, _Origin of Language_, pp. 100, _et seq._; Donaldson, _Greek Grammar_, pp. 67-79; and Hovelacque, _Science of Language_, p. 37. It will be remarked that this question does not affect the exposition in the text.

[148] _Grundriss der Sprachwissenschaft_, I. i. 77. This estimate is accepted by Professor Sayce, _Introduction to the Science of Language_, vol. ii., p. 32.

[149] Hovelacque, _Science of Language_, English trans., p. 37.

[150] This method of representation was devised by Schleicher, who carries it further than I have occasion to do in the text. See _Memoirs of Academy of St. Petersburg_, vol. i., No. 7, 1859.

[151] Hovelacque, _loc. cit._, p. 130.

[152] Sayce, _Introduction, &c._, i. 126.

[153] _Introduction, &c._, vol. i., p. 374.

[154] _Ibid._, vol. i., pp. 375, 376.

[155] _Ibid._, p. 120. See also his _Principles of Comparative Philology_, 2nd ed., p. ix.

[156] Sayce, _Introduction, &c._, i., 125, 126.

[157] Hovelacque, _Science of Language_, p. 130.

[158] “What we most need to note is the very narrow limitation of our present knowledge. Even among the neighbouring families like the Algonquin, Troquois, and Dakota, whose agreement in style of structure (polysynthetic), taken in connection with the accordant race-type of their speakers, forbids us to regard them as ultimately different, no material correspondence, agreements in words and meanings, is to be traced; and there are in America all degrees of polysynthetism, down to the lowest, and even to its entire absence. Such being the case, it ought to be evident that all attempts to connect American languages as a body with languages of the Old World are, and must be, fruitless: in fact, all discussions of the matter are at present unscientific” (Professor Whitney in _Encycl. Brit._, art. “Philology,” 1885).

[159] _Introduction, &c._, i. 120.

[160] _Ibid._, i. 116.

[161] “The number of separate families of speech now existing in the world, which cannot be connected with one another, is at least seventy-five; and the number will doubtless be increased when we have grammars and dictionaries of the numerous languages and dialects which are still unknown, and better information as regards those with which we are partially acquainted. If we add to these the innumerable groups of speech which have passed away without leaving behind even such waifs as the Basque of the Pyrenees, or the Etruscan of ancient Italy, some idea will be formed of the infinite number of primæval centres or communities in which language took its rise” (Sayce, _Introduction, &c._, ii. 323).

[162] _Life and Growth of Language_, p. 259.

[163] _Ibid._, p. 262.

[164] I may add that the hypothesis admits of corroboration from sources not mentioned by its author. For Archdeacon Farrar wrote in 1865:—“The neglected children in some of the Canadian and Indian villages, who are left alone for days, can and do invent for themselves a sort of _lingua franca_, partially or wholly unintelligible to all except themselves;” and he quotes Mr. R. Moffat as “testifying to a similar phenomenon in the villages of South Africa (_Mission Travels_).” He also alludes to the fact that “deaf-mutes have an instinctive power to develop for themselves a language of signs,” which, as we have seen in an earlier chapter, embraces the use of arbitrary articulations, even though in this case the speakers cannot themselves hear the sounds which they make.

While this work is passing through the press an additional paper has been published by Dr. Hale, entitled, _The Development of Language_. It supplies further evidence in support of this hypothesis.

[165] Wundt, _Vorlesungen, &c._, ii., 380, 381.

[166] Sayce, _Introduction to Science of Language_, ii, 13.

[167] The difference of opinion in question seems to arise from individual prepossessions with regard to the ulterior question whether or not the aboriginal roots of all languages must have been polysyllabic. For my own part, and for the reasons already given, I can see no presumption in favour of the view that primitive languages must all have presented the “polysinthetic genius.”

[168] _Histoire des Langues Semitique_, p. 138.

[169] _Etymological Dictionary_, p. 746.

[170] See Max Müller, _Science of Thought_, p. 332.

[171] _Ibid._, p. 404.

[172] _Ethnologische Forschungen_, ii., s. 73, _et seq._ He here quotes Varro to the effect that the roots of Latin amount to about a thousand.

[173] _Language and the Study of Language_, p. 256.

[174] Sayce, _Introduction to the Science of Language_, ii., p. 4.

[175] Geiger, _Ursprung der Sprache_, s. 16.

[176] Sayce, _loc. cit._, ii. p. 6.

[177] Wedgwood, _Etymol. Dict._, p. iii.

[178] Farrar, _Origin of Language_, p. 53.

[179] _Science of Thought_, p. 439.

[180] _Science of Thought_, p. 549.

[181] _Science of Thought_, pp. 551, 552.

[182] _Ibid._, pp. 551, 552.

[183] “The Aryan languages are the languages of a civilized race; the parent speech to which we may inductively trace them was spoken by men who stood on a relatively high level of culture” (Sayce, _Introduction, &c._, i. 56). “The primitive tribe which spoke the mother-tongue of the Indo-European family was not nomadic alone, but had settled habitations, even towns and fortified places, and addicted itself in part to the rearing of cattle, in part to the cultivation of the earth. It possessed our chief domesticated animals—the horse, the ox, the goat, and the swine, besides the dog: the bear and the wolf were foes that ravaged its flocks; the mouse and the fly were already domestic pests.... Barley, and perhaps also wheat, was raised for food, and converted into meal. Mead was prepared from honey, as a cheering and inebriating drink. The use of certain metals was known; whether iron was one of them admits of question. The art of weaving was practised; wool and hemp, and possibly flax, being the materials employed.... The weapons of offence and defence were those which are usual among primitive peoples, the sword, spear, bow, and shield. Boats were manufactured and moved by oars.... The art of numeration was learned, at least up to a hundred; there is no general Indo-European word for ‘thousand.’ Some of the stars were noticed and named; the moon was the chief measurer of time. The religion was polytheistic, a worship of the personified powers of nature” (Whitney, _Language and the Study of Language_, pp. 207, 208). For a more detailed account of this interesting people, see Poescher, _Die Arier_.

[184] “Unsere Wurzeln sind die Urwurzeln nicht; wir haben vielleicht, von keiner einzigen die erste, ursprüngliche Laut-form mehr vor uns, ebensowenig wohl die Urbedeutung” (Geiger, _Ursprung der Sprache_, s. 65). And this opinion, so far as I know, is adopted as an axiom by all other philologists.

[185] “It is impossible to bring down the epoch at which the Aryan tribes still lived in the same locality, and spoke practically the same language, to a date much later than the third millennium before the Christian era” (Sayce, _Introduction_, _&c._, ii., p. 320).

[186] This fact alone would be sufficient to dispose of what I cannot but consider, from any and every point of view, the transparent absurdity of the doctrine that “the formation of thought is the first and natural purpose of language, while its communication is accidental only” (_Science of Thought_, p. 40). Such a “purpose” would imply “thought” as already formed; and, therefore, the doctrine must suppose a purpose to precede the conditions of its own possibility.

[187] I use the term “verbs” merely for the sake of brevity and clearness. Of course there cannot have been verbs, strictly so-called, before there were parts of speech of any kind. The more accurate statement is given in the next sentence, and is the one which I desire to be understood hereafter in the short-hand expression “verbs.”

[188] “It must be borne in mind that primitive man did not distinguish between phenomena and volitions, but included everything under the head of actions, not only the involuntary actions of human beings, such as breathing, but also the movements of inanimate things, the rising and setting of the sun, the wind, the flowing of water, and even such purely inanimate phenomena as fire, electricity, &c.; in short, all the changing attributes of things were conceived as voluntary actions” (Sweet, _Words, Logic and Grammar_, p. 486).

[189] As a matter of fact, and as we shall subsequently see, there is an immense body of purely philological evidence to show that verbs are really a much later product of linguistic growth than either nouns or pronouns. This is proved by their comparative paucity in many existing languages of low development (their place being taken by pronominal appositions, &c.); and also by tracing the origin of many of them to other parts of speech. (See especially Garnett’s _Essays, Pritchard on the Celtic Languages_, _Quart. Rev._, Sept. 1876; _The Derivation of Words from Pronominal and Prepositional Roots_, _Proc. Philol. Soc._ vol. ii.; and _On the Nature and Analysis of the Verb_, ibid., vol. iii.) Later on it will be shown that in the really primitive stages of language-growth there is no assignable distinction between any of the parts of speech. Archdeacon Farrar well remarks, “The invention of a verb requires a greater effort of abstraction than that of a noun.... We cannot accept it as even _possible_ that from roots meaning _to shine_, _to be bright_, names were formed for _sun_, _moon_, _stars_, &c.... In some places, indeed, Professor Müller appears to hold the correct view, that at first ‘roots’ stood for any and every part of speech, just as the monosyllabic expressions of children do” (_Chapters on Language_, pp. 196, 197; see, also, some good remarks on the subject by Sir Graves Haughton, _Bengali Grammar_, p. 108).

[190] “Standst du dabei, als sich der Brust des noch stummen Urmenschen der erste Sprachlaut entrang? und verstandst du ihn? Oder hat man dir die Urwurzeln jener ersten Menschen vor hundert tausend Jahren überliefert? Sind das, was du als Wurzeln hinstellst, und was wirklich Wurzeln sein mögen, auch Wurzeln der Urzeit, unveränderte Reflexlaute? Sind jene deine Wurzeln älter als sechstausend, als zehntausend Jahre? und wie viel mögen sie sich in den früheren Jahrzehntausenden verändert haben? wie mag sich ihre Bedeutung verändert haben?” (Steinthal, _Zeits. b. Volkerpysch. u. Sprachwiss._, 1867, s. 76).

[191] _Supra_, p. 68, _et seq._

[192] _Ursprung der Sprache_, s. 74. To the same effect, and from the side of psychology, I may quote Wundt:—“Oft hat man desshalb in der Sprache einen Ubergang vom Abstrakten zum Konkreten zu finden geglaubt, weil dieselbe thatsächlich zunächst umfassendere, dann individuellere Vorstellungen bezeichnet und erst zuletzt wieder die Namen individueller Objekte zu Gemeinnamen stempelt. Aber was am Anfang dieser Reihe liegt ist etwas ganz anderes als was den Schluss derselben bildet: Gemeinnamen sind wirkliche Zeichen für Allgemeinvorstellungen und Begriffe. Jene ersten Vorstellungen, welche das Bewusstsein bildet und die Sprache ausdrückt, sind nicht _Allgemein_vorstellungen sondern _umfassende_ Vorstellungen. Beides ist wesentlich aus einander zu halten” (_Vorlesungen, &c._, ii. 382). The passage then proceeds to discuss the psychology of the subject.

[193] _Introduction, &c._, ii. 5, 6.

[194] And even as regards this minority (such as “to be,” “to think,” “to do,” &c.), we must remember an important consideration on which Geiger bestows a number of excellent pages. Briefly put, this consideration is that the offspring of words are everywhere proved to have progressively changed their meanings by successive steps and in divergent lines: applying this general law to the case of roots, it follows that the oldest meaning which philology is able to trace as expressed by a root, need not be anywhere near the meaning which attached to its remoter parents: the latter may have been much less conceptual.

[195] Professor Max Müller says in one place, “The Science of Language, by inquiring into the origin of general terms, has established two facts of the highest importance, namely, first, that all terms were originally general; and, secondly, that they could not be anything but general” (_Science of Thought_, p. 456). Elsewhere, however, he says, “Although during the time when the growth of language becomes historical and most accessible, therefore, to our observation, the tendency certainly is from the general to the special, I cannot resist the conviction that before that time there was a pre-historic period during which language followed an opposite direction. During that period roots, beginning with special meanings, became more and more generalized, and it was only after reaching that stage that they branched off again into special channels” (_ibid._, pp. 383, 384). Again, in his earlier work on the _Science of Language_ (vol. i., pp. 425-432), he argues in favour of terms having been aboriginally general. It will thus be seen that with reference to this question he is not consistent. Touching the first of his doctrines above quoted, Geiger pertinently observes that against such a conclusion there lies the obvious absurdity, that if a language were to consist exclusively of general terms, it would be _ipso facto_ unintelligible to its own speakers; “for what hope could there be of any mutual understanding with a language comprising only such words as “to bind,” “to sound,” &c.? (_Ursprung der Sprache_, s. 16). Clearly, Professor Max Müller’s difficulties regarding this subject are quite imaginary, and would disappear if he were to entertain the natural alternative that there is no reason to suppose aboriginal words were exclusively restricted to being either special or general—_i.e._ generic.

[196] Bunsen, _Philosophy of Universal History_, ii. 131.

[197] Professor Max Müller in all his works; but it is observable that his opposition to what he calls the “bow-wow and pooh-pooh theory” was more strenuous in his earlier publications than it is in his later.

[198] It is needless to say that innumerable instances might be quoted of this metaphorical change in the meanings of words, even in existing languages,—so much so, indeed, that, as Richter says, all languages are but dictionaries of forgotten metaphors. For example, there is a single Hebrew word of three letters which may bear any one of the following significations:—to mix, to exchange, to stand in place of, to pledge, to interfere, to be familiar, to disappear, to set, to do a thing in the evening, to be sweet, a fly or beetle, an Arabian, a stranger, the weft of cloth, the evening, a willow, and a raven. (See Farrar, _Chapters on Language_, p. 229. He adds, “Assuming that all these significations are ultimately deducible from one and the same root, we see at once the extent to which metaphor must have been at work.” For further examples of the same principle, see _ibid._, pp. 234, 251, 252.)

[199] _Science of Thought_, pp. 317, 318.

[200] Or, as Heyse puts it, many onomatopœias are not “old fruitful roots of language, but modern inventions which remain isolated in language, and are incapable of originating any families of words, because their meaning is too limited and special to admit of a manifold application” (_System_, s. 92, quoted by Farrar, _Chapters on Language_, p. 152, who also shows that words of onomatopoetic origin are not invariably sterile. When such origin is not so remote as to have become wholly obscured by a widely connotative extension, it does remain possible to trace its progeny through areas of smaller extension).

[201] “Nichtsdestoweniger bleibt es eine wichtige psychologische Thatsache, dass die Laute einen onomatopoetischen Werth haben, dass wir diesen Werth heute noch fühlen. Nur ist dieses Gefühl nicht sicher genug, um als wissenschaftlicher Beweis zu gelten, wie es denn auch bei den verschiedenen Racen verschieden ist. Die Sprachen der mongolischen Race haben zur Bezeichnung von Naturereignissen viele Onomatopöien, welche wir nicht mitfühlen. Und das ist weder zu verwundern, noch ist es ein Beweis gegen die geistige Einheit des Menschengeschlechtes. Das Gefühl wird ja vielfach durch Associationen der Vorstellungen bestimmt. Andere Associationen aber walten im Kaukasier, andere im Mongolen” (_Zeits. b. Volkerpsych. u. Sprachwissen._, 1867, s. 76).

[202] _Introduction, &c._, i., p. 108. He points out that “_bilbit_, _glut-glut_, and _puls_, are all attempts to represent the same sound.”

[203] _Chapters on Language_, p. 154.

[204] _Ueber Namen des Donners_, 1855.

[205] Steinthal’s _Zeitschrift_, &c.

[206] Professor Max Müller has argued that in the Indo-European languages the apparently onomatopoetic words signifying “thunder” are derived from the root _tan_, to “stretch,” and therefore were not of imitative origin. But Farrar has satisfactorily met this objection, even as regards this one particular case, by showing that even if not originally onomatopoetic, these words afterwards “became so from a feeling of the need that they should be” (_Origin of Language_, p. 82). See also, _Chapters on Language_, pp. 178-182; Heyse, _System_, s. 93; and Wundt, _Vorlesungen, &c._, ii. 396.

[207] See also Nodier, _Dictionnaire des Onomatopées_; and Wedgwood, _Dictionary of English Etymology_.

[208] Probably the explanation of this apparent inconsistency is to be found in the fact that Noiré’s special version of the onomatopoetic theory comes within easy distance of a hypothesis which Max Müller had himself previously sanctioned. This hypothesis, originally propounded by Heyse in his _System der Sprachwissenschaft_, is that, just as every inorganic substance in nature gives out a particular sound when struck—metal one sound, wood another, stone another, &c.—so different animals have inherent tendencies (or “instincts”) to emit distinctive sounds. In the case of primitive man this inherent tendency was in the direction of articulate speech. For my own part, I do not see that this theory explains anything; and therefore agree with Geiger, who says of it:—“Die Annahme eines jetzt erloschenen Vermögens der Sprachschöpfung und die damit zusammenhängende von einem vollkommenen Urzustande des Menschen ist eine Zuflucht zum Unbegreiflichen, und nicht weit von dem Eingeständnisse entfernt, dass es uns der Natur der Dinge nach für immer unmöglich sei, den wahren Sinn der Urwurzeln zu erkennen und den Vorgang des Sprachursprunges zu erklären. Wir würden mit einer solchen Annahme auf einen mystischen Standpunkt zurückgeführt sein, da doch schon Herder das ‘Gespenst vom Wort Fähigkeit’ bekämpft und gesagt hat: ‘Jch gebe den Menschen nicht gleich plötzlich neue Kräfte, keine sprachschaffende Fähigkeit, wie eine willkürliche qualitas occulta’” (_Ursprung der Sprache_, s. 24). Sayce, also, well remarks of this hypothesis, “It really rests upon an _a priori_ conception of the origin of speech, which is neither borne out by linguistic facts nor easily intelligible.... Such a theory of language is plainly mystical” (_Introduction to Science of Language_, vol. i., pp. 66, 67).

[209] _Encyclo. Brit._, art. “Philology,” vol. xviii., p. 769.

[210] See, for instance, Farrar, _Chapters on Language_, p. 184.

[211] See above, pp. 138-144.

[212] See above, pp. 121, 122.

[213] See _Vorlesungen, &c._, ii. 394, 395.

[214] See above, pp. 132-136.

[215] _Introduction to the Science of Language_, ii. 302.

[216] See above, pp. 138-143.

[217] _Der Ursprung der Sprache_, s. 31. His own answer to the question is as follows:—“Sind die Wörter Produkte der Natur order der Willkür? Beides und beides nicht. Kein Wort hat naturnothwendig seine bestimmte Bedeutung; insofern sind sie alle willkürlich: aber keines ist zu seiner Bedeutung durch menschliche Willensthätigkeit gekommen” (_ibid._, s. 113).

[218] Schelling, _Einl. in die Philos. d. Mythologie_, s. 51.

[219] _Anthropologie der Naturvölker_, i., 272. See also, F. Müller, _Grundriss der Sprachwissenshaft_, I. i. 49.

[220] _Science of Language_, ii. 91, 92.

[221] _Grund. d. Sprachwiss._, i., 43.

[222] _Ægypten_, i. 324.

[223] Sayce, _Introduction, &c._, i. 119, 120.

[224] _Science of Thought_, 423-440.

[225] Sayce, _Introduction, &c._, i. 111.

[226] _Ibid._, i. 113, 114.

[227] Sayce, _Introduction, &c._, i. 121.

[228] _Science of Thought_, p. 242.

[229] Garnett, _Philolo. Essays_, p. 87.

[230] _Ibid._, 77, 78.

[231] Farrar, _Origin of Language_, p. 99. The passage continues, “We might have conjectured this from the fact already noticed, that children learn to speak of themselves in the third person—_i.e._ regard themselves as objects—long before they acquire the power of representing their material selves as the instrument of an abstract entity.” He also alludes to “some admirable remarks to this effect in Mr. F. Whalley Harper’s excellent book on the _Power of Greek Tenses_;” and recurs to the subject in his more recently published _Chapters on Language_, p. 62. I could quote other authorities who have commented upon this philological peculiarity of early pronouns; but will only add the following in order to show how the peculiarity in question may continue to survive even in languages still spoken. “The Malay _ulun_, ‘I,’ is still ‘a man’ in Lampong, and the Kawi _ugwang_, ‘I,’ cannot be separated from _nwang_, ‘a man’” (Sayce, _Introduction_, ii. 26). Lastly, Wundt has pointed out that this impersonal form of speech is distinctive, not only of early pronominal elements, but also of early forms of predication. For instance, “Die ersten Urtheile, die in das Bewusstsein hereinbrechen, _subjektlose_ Urtheile sind, und dass die Prädikate derselben stets eine sinnliche Vorstellung ausdrücken. ‘Es leuchtet es glänzt, es tönt,’—solcher Art sind die Urtheile, die der Mensch zuerst denkt und zuerst ausspricht. Jenes Prädikat, dass sogleich bei der Wahrnehmung eines Gegenstandes sich aufdrängt, wird zur Bezeichnung des Gegenstandes selber. ‘Das Leuchtende, Glänzende, Tönende,’—solcher Art find die Wörter, die ursprünglich in der Sprache gebildet werden” (_loc. cit._, ii. 377).

[232] _Science of Thought_, p. 221.

[233] _Ibid._, p. 554.

[234] _Ibid._, 241.

[235] Sayce, _Introduction, &c._, ii. 25; see also to the same effect, Bleek, _Ursprung der Sprache_, 70-72; F. Müller, _Grundriss der Sprachwissenshaft_, I., i., s. 40; and Noiré, _Logos_, p. 186. The chief ground of this scepticism is that it is difficult to conceive how a word could ever have gained a footing if it did not from the first present some independent predicative meaning. But it seems to me that the force of this objection is removed if we remember the sounds which are arbitrarily invented by young children and uneducated deaf-mutes, not to mention the inarticulate clicks of the Bushmen. Moreover, there is nothing inimical to the pronominal theory in the supposition that pronominal elements, even of the most aboriginal kind, were survivals of still more primitive sentence-words—a supposition which would of course remove the difficulty in question. But, as explained in the text, this difficulty, even if it could not be thus met, would really not be one of any importance to my exposition.

[236] _Introduction, &c._, i. 117.

[237] _Introduction, &c._, ii. 301. Or, as Wundt puts it, “Die demonstrative Wurzel ist daher eine demonstrirende Pantomime in einen Laut übersetzt” (_Vorlesungen, &c._, ii. 392).

[238] Sayce, _Introduction, &c._, i. 415. See also F. Müller, _loc. cit._, I. i. 2, p. 2, for another statement of the same facts referred to by Sayce.

[239] Sayce, _Introduction, &c._, i. 416.

[240] Sweet, _Words, Logic, and Grammar_, in _Trans. Philo. Soc._, 1867, p. 493.

[241] _Science of Thought_, p. 442.

[242] See especially Garnett, _On the Nature and Analysis of the Verb_.

[243] _Science of Thought_, p. 223.

[244] _Ibid._, p. 442.

[245] Sayce, _Introduction, &c._

[246] I refer the reader to what is said on both these aspects of the verb in question by my opponents (see pp. 165-167.)

[247] Farrar, _Origin of Language_, pp. 105, 106.

[248] Garnett, _On the Nature and Analysis of the Verb_, _Proc. Philo. Soc._, vol. iii.

[249] Sayce, _Introduction, &c._, i. 415.

[250] Geiger, _Development of the Human Race_, English trans., p. 22.

[251] Sweet, _Words, Logic, and Grammar_, in _Trans. Philol. Soc._, 1876, pp. 486, 487.

[252] Sweet, _loc. cit._, pp. 489, 490.

[253] Bleek, _Ursprung der Sprache_, s. 69, 70.

[254] _Science of Thought_, p. 241.

[255] Steinthal, _Charakteristik, &c._, 165, 173.

[256] Garnett, _Philological Essays_, p. 310.

[257] _Ibid._, p. 311.

[258] _Ibid._, p. 312.

[259] _Ibid._, p. 314.

[260] See Chapter on Speech, p. 166.

[261] I may remark that it was Aristotle who first fell into the error of identifying the copula with the verb _to be_, by which it happens to be expressed in Greek. For many centuries afterwards this error was a fruitful source of endless confusions; but it is curious to find a wholly new fallacy springing from it in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Touching the subject and predicate, Aristotle, of course, never contemplated any more primitive relation between them than that which obtained in the only forms of speech with which he was acquainted. As regards his “categories” the following remarks by Professor Max Müller are worth quoting:—

“These categories, which proved of so much utility to the early grammarians, have a still higher interest to the students of the science of language and thought. Whereas Aristotle accepted them simply as the given forms of predication in Greek, after that language had become possessed of the whole wealth of its words, we shall have to look upon them as representing the various processes by which those Greek words, and all our own words and thoughts, too, first assumed a settled form. While Aristotle took all his words and sentences as given, and simply analyzed them in order to discover how many kinds of predication they contained, we ask how we ever came into possession of such words as _horse_, _white_, _many_, _greater_, _here_, _now_, _I stand_, _I fear_, _I cut_, _I am cut_. Anybody who is in possession of such words can easily predicate, but we shall now have to show that every word by itself was from the first a predication, and that it formed a complete sentence by itself. To us, therefore, the real question is, how these primitive sentences, which afterwards dwindled away into mere words, came into existence. The true categories, in fact, are not those which are taught by grammar, but those which produced grammar, and it is these categories which we now proceed to examine” (_Science of Thought_, p. 439).

[262] Sayce, _Introduction, &c._, ii. 229. He adds, “Had Aristotle been a Mexican, his system of logic would have assumed a wholly different form.”

[263] _Introduction, &c._, i, 15.

[264] In these considerations I find myself able largely to reconcile what has always been regarded as a contradiction between the views of Professor Whitney and those of other philologists on the subject of sentence-words. Partly following Schleicher—who maintains the doctrine still more unequivocally—he regards the word as having been historically prior to the sentence. This, of course, is in contradiction to the doctrine of the sentence having been historically prior to the word, which, as we have seen, is the doctrine now held by philologists in general. But, now, what the latter doctrine really amounts to is, that words were sentences before they were names—predicative before they were nominative; and, as I understand it, Whitney’s objection to this doctrine is really raised on grounds of psychology. If so, the above considerations show that he is perfectly right. Intellectually, primitive man was fully capable of acquiring the use of words as names; and, therefore, psychologically considered, it was only an accident of social environment which prevented him from so doing.

[265] _Science of Thought_, pp. 432, 433.

[266] Pp. 281, 282, note.

[267] _Ursprung der Sprache_, s. 65. For the original German, see the passage as previously quoted on page 273, note.

[268] As pointed out in a previous chapter, curious ambiguity attaches to this term. For, as used in biology, it means the _hitherto undifferentiated_, while in psychology and elsewhere a “generalization” means the _synthetically integrated_. But, as psychologists never speak of ideas as “generalized,” I here use the word in its biological sense. See also above, pp. 277-280.

[269] _Ursprung der Sprache_, s. 69, 70.

[270] Bleek entertains no doubt on this point.

[271] Compare also close of Chapter VII. (pp. 138-144), where the children mentioned by Dr. Hale are shown to have adopted the syntax of gesture-language in their spontaneously devised spoken language.

[272] Chapter VI., pp. 114-120.

[273] _Sign-Language, &c._, p. 284. On page 352, this writer further supplies a most interesting comparison between gesture and spoken language as both are used by the North American Indians—showing that the syntax in the two cases is identical.

[274] Whitney, _Encyclo. Brit._, _loc. cit._, p. 770. It is interesting to note that the psychological importance of this principle was clearly enunciated by Locke:—“It may lead us a little towards the original of all our notions and knowledge, if we remark how great a dependence our words have on common sensible ideas; and how those which are made use of to stand for actions and notions quite removed from sense, have their rise from thence, and from obvious sensible ideas are transferred to more abstruse significations, and made to stand for ideas that come out under the cognizance of our senses” (_Human Understanding_, iii. i. 5).

[275] Whitney, _Encyclo. Brit._, p. 770. See also Nodier, _Notions de Linguistique_, p. 39; Garnett, _Essays_, p. 89; Grimm, _Gesch. d. d. Sprache_, s. 56 _et seq._; Pott, _Metaphern vom Leben, &c._, _Zeitschr. fur Vergl. Sprachf. Jahrg._, ii., heft 2; Heyse, _System, &c._, s. 97; and Farrar, _Origin of Language_, 130; _Chapters on Language_, pp. 67, 133, 204-246. He refers to the above, and quotes the following passages from Emerson and Carlyle:—“As the limestone of the Continent consists of infinite masses of shells of animalcules, so language is made up of images and tropes, which now, in their secondary use, have long ceased to remind us of their poetic origin” (_Essays on the Poets_). “Language is the flesh-garment of Thought. I said that Imagination wore this flesh-garment; and does she not? Metaphors are her stuff. Examine Language. What, if you except a few primitive elements of natural sound, what is it all but metaphors recognized as such, or no longer recognized; still fluid and florid, or now solid-grown and colourless? If those same primitive elements are the osseous fixtures in the flesh-garment of Language—then are metaphors its muscles, its tissues, and living integuments. An unmetaphorical style you shall in vain seek for: is not your very _attention_ a _stretching-to_?” (_Sartor Resartus_, ch. x.).

[276] _Science of Thought_, p. 329.

[277] _Science of Language_, p. 123.

[278] _Logos_, p. 258, _et seq._

[279] Geiger, _Address delivered before the International Congress for Archæology and History at Bonn_, 1868.

[280] Geiger, _A Lecture to the Commercial Club of Frankfort-on-the-Main_ (1869).

[281] Perhaps the most interesting department of fundamental metaphor is that wherein the metaphor is found by philological research to have reference, not to any natural object, quality, &c., but to a pre-existing action or gesture as already made by man himself for the purpose of conveying information, expressing his emotions, &c. For fundamental metaphor of this kind obviously brings us within seeing distance of the time when the audible signs of articulations were born of the visible signs of gesture and grimace. In illustration of this branch of our subject I will only quote one passage; but the reader will at once perceive how easy it would be to furnish many other instances from the etymology of words now in habitual use.

“The further a language has been developed from its primordial roots, which have been twisted into forms no longer suggesting any reason for their original selection, and the more the primitive significance of its words has disappeared, the fewer points of contact can it retain with signs. The higher languages are more precise because the consciousness of the derivation of most of their words is lost, so that they have become counters, good for any sense agreed upon and for no other.

“It is, however, possible to ascertain the included gesture even in many English words. The class represented by the word _supercilious_ will occur to all readers, but one or two examples may be given not so obvious and more immediately connected with the gestures of our Indians. _Imbecile_, generally applied to the weakness of old age, is derived from the Latin _in_, in the sense of on, and _bacillum_, a staff, which at once recalls the Cheyenne sign for _old man_ [previously mentioned]. So _time_ appears more nearly connected with [Greek: teinô], to stretch, when information is given of the sign for _long time_, in the Speech of Kin Chē-ĕss, in this paper, namely, placing the thumbs and forefingers in such a position as if a small thread was held between the thumb and forefinger of each hand, the hands first touching each other, and then moving slowly from each other, as if _stretching_ a piece of gum-elastic” (Mallery, _Sign-Language, &c._, p. 350). This writer also says, with reference to the uncivilized languages which he has specially studied, “In the languages of North America, which have not become arbitrary, to the degree exhibited by those of civilized man, the connection between the idea and the word is only less obvious than that still unbroken connection between the idea and the sign, and they remain strongly affected by the concepts of outline, form, place, position, and feature on which gesture is founded, while they are similar in their fertile combination of radicals. Indian language consists of a series of words that are but slightly differentiated parts of speech following each other in the order suggested in the mind of the speaker without absolute laws of arrangement, as its sentences are not completely integrated. The sentence necessitates parts of speech, and parts of speech are possible only when a language has reached that stage where sentences are logically constructed. The words of an Indian tongue, being synthetic or undifferentiated parts of speech, are in this respect strictly analogous to the gesture elements which enter into a sign-language. The study of the latter is therefore valuable for comparison with the words of the former. The one language throws much light upon the other, and neither can be studied to the best advantage without a knowledge of the other.”

[282] There are certain writers, such as Du Ponceau, Charlevoix, James, Appleyard, Threlkeld, Caldwell, &c., who have sought to represent that the languages of even the lowest savages are “highly systematic and truly philosophical,” &c. But this opinion rests on a radically false estimate of the criteria of system and philosophy in a language. For the criteria chosen are exuberance of synonyms, intricacies or complications of forms, &c., which are really works of a low development. The fallacy is now acknowledged to be such by all philologists. Even Farrar, who at first himself fell into this error (_Origin of Language_, p. 28), in his subsequent work writes:—“Further examination has entirely removed this belief. For this apparent wealth of synonyms and grammatical forms is chiefly due _to the hopeless poverty of the power of abstraction_. It would not only be no advantage, but even an impossible encumbrance to a language required for literary purposes. The transnormal character of these tongues only proves that they are the work of minds incapable of all subtle analysis, and following in one single direction an erroneous and partial line of development.... If language proves anything, it proves that these savages must have lived continuously in a savage condition” (Farrar, _Chapters on Language_, pp. 53, 54, who also refers to numerous authorities).

[283] The term “conception” here is, of course, equivalent to my term “pre-conception.” When my daughter uttered her first denotative word “star,” she was, indeed, bestowing a name; but it was the name of a recept, not of a concept.

[284] Farrar, _Chapters on Language_, pp. 198, 199.

[285] _Mithridates_, iii. 325, 397. See also Pott, _Etym. Forsch._, ii. 167; and Heyse, _System_, 132.

[286] Latham, _Races of Man_, p. 376.

[287] Quatrefages, _Rev. des Deux Mondes_, Dec. 15, 1860; Maury, _La Terre et l’Homme_, p. 433.

[288] _Mem. sur le Syst. Gram., &c._, p. 120.

[289] _Malay Grammar_, i., p. 68, _et seq._

[290] _Journl. Ameri. Orient, Soc._, i. No. 4, p. 402.

[291] Casalis, _Grammar_, p. 7.

[292] Pickering, _Indian Languages_, p. 26.

[293] _Vocabulary of the Dialects of some of the Aboriginal Tribes of Tasmania_, p. 34.

[294] _Introduction, &c._, vol. ii., p. 6.

[295] _Ibid._, vol. i., p. 379.

[296] _A Lecture delivered at Frankfort_, 1869.

[297] _Science of Thought_, p. 245.

[298] _Essays_, p. 89.

[299] _Chapters on Language_, p. 133.

[300] Herder, _Abhandl._, s. 122.

[301] _Das Leben der Seele_, ii. 47.

[302] _Grundriss der Sprachwissenschaft_, i. 35, 36.

[303] See, for example, F. Müller, _loc. cit._, i. 36, 37.

[304] Some of the supporters of the interjectional theory in this extreme, not to say extravagant form, appear to go on the assumption that primitive and hitherto speechless man already differed from the lower animals in presenting conceptual thought. This assumption would, of course, explain why man alone began to invest his instinctive cries, &c., with the character of names. But, from a psychological point of view, any such assumption is obviously a putting of the cart before the horse. I make this remark in order to add that the objection would not apply if the ideation were supposed to be _pre-conceptual_—_i.e._ beyond the level reached by any brute, though not yet distinctively human. Later on, I myself espouse a theory to this effect.

[305] _E.g._ by Mr. Ward, in his _Dynamical Sociology_.

[306] Differences of opinion are entertained by philologists concerning the value of “nursery-language,” or “baby-talk,” as a guide to the probable stages of language-growth in primitive man. Without going into the arguments upon this question on either side, it appears to me that the analogy as above limited cannot be objected to even by the most extreme sceptics upon the philological value of infantile utterance. And it is only to this extent that I anywhere use the analogy.

[307] For cases, see Heinieke, _Beobachtungen über Stumme_, s. 137, &c.

[308] _Ibid._, s. 73.

[309] _Mental Evolution in Animals_, p. 238.

[310] The carnivorous habits of this animal (which is named as a new species) are most interesting. It is surmised that in its wild state it must live upon birds; but in the Zoological Gardens it is found to show a marked preference for cooked meat over raw. It dines off boiled mutton-chops, the bones of which it picks with its fingers and teeth, being afterwards careful to clean its hands. It mixes a little straw with the mutton as vegetables, and finishes its dinner with a dessert of fruits. But a more important point is that this animal answers its keeper in vocal tones—or rather grunts—when he speaks to it, and these tones are understood by the keeper as indicative of different mental states. I have spent a great deal of time in observing this animal, but the publicity and other circumstances render it difficult to do much in the way of experiment or tuition. With regard to teaching her to count, see above, p. 58; and with regard to her understanding of words, p. 126.

[311] “If there once existed creatures above the apes and below man, who were extirpated by primitive man as his especial rivals in the struggle for existence, or became extinct in any other way, there is no difficulty in supposing them to have possessed forms of speech, more rudimentary and imperfect than ours” (Professor Whitney, Art. _Philology_, _Ency. Brit._, vol. xviii., p. 769).

[312] Houzeau gives a very curious account of his observations on this subject in his _Facultés Mentales des Animaux_, tom. ii., p. 348.

[313] _Descent of Man_, p. 87.

[314] _Descent of Man_, p. 87.

[315] This term is used by Haeckel as synonymous with _Pithecanthropoi_, or the ape-like men, who are supposed to have immediately preceded _Homo sapiens_ (_History of Evolution_, English trans., vol. ii., p. 293). In the next instalment of work I will consider what has to be said in favour of this view from the side of my anthropology. Meanwhile, it is sufficient to bear in mind that, as previously stated, great as is the psychological difference introduced by the faculty of speech, for the attainment of this faculty anatomical changes so minute as to be imperceptible were all that seem to have been required. “The argument, that because there is an immense difference between a man’s intelligence and an ape’s, therefore there must be an equally immense difference between their brains, appears to me to be about as well based as the reasoning by which one should endeavour to prove that, because there is a ‘great gulf’ between a watch that keeps accurate time and another that will not go at all, there is therefore a great structural hiatus between the two watches. A hair in the balance-wheel, a little rust on a pinion, a bend in a tooth of the escapement, a something so slight that only the practised eye of the watchmaker can discover it, may be the source of all the difference. And believing, as I do, with Cuvier, that the possession of articulate speech is the grand distinctive character of man (whether it be absolutely peculiar to him or not), I find it very easy to comprehend, that some equally inconspicuous structural difference may have been the primary cause of the immeasurable and practically infinite divergence of the human from the simian stirps” (Huxley, _Man’s Place in Nature_, p. 103).

[316] Here I will ask the reader to bear in mind the considerations above adduced from Geiger, as to the encouragement which must have been given to a semiotic use of vocal sounds by habitual attention being given to the movements of the mouth in significant grimace—such attention being naturally bestowed in larger measure by an intelligent ape-like creature which was accustomed to depend chiefly on its sense of sight, than it would be by any of the existing quadrumana.

[317] For sign-making among the social insects, see above, pp. 88-95.

[318] Here, be it observed, the element of truth which belongs to the first of the three hypotheses that we are considering comes in. Compare foot-note on page 364: _Homo alalus_, though not yet a conceptual thinker, is nevertheless in possession of a higher receptual life than has ever been attained by a brute, and is correspondingly more capable of utilizing as signs interjectional or other sounds which emanate from the “purely physiological grounds” of his own organization.

[319] See Preyer, _loc. cit._, for a detailed account of the order in which the consonants are developed in the growing child. Also Professor Holden, on the _Vocabularies of Children_, in _Proc. Amer. Philolo. Ass._, 1877. There can be no doubt that vowel sounds must have been of early origin in the race; but in what order the consonants may have followed is much more doubtful. For different races now exhibit great differences with regard to the use—and even to the capability of using—consonantal sounds; the Chinese, for instance, changing _r_ into _l_, while the Japanese change _l_ into _r_. And, of course, the whole science of comparative philology may be said to be based upon a study of the laws of “phonetic change.” But it is obviously a matter of no importance in what particular order the different articulate sounds were first evolved. According to Prince Lucien Bonaparte, who has investigated the matter with much care, the total number of these sounds that can be possibly made by the human organs of vocalization is 385. See, also, Ellis, on _Early English Pronunciation_; and, for the limitation of consonants in various languages of existing races, Hovelaque, _Science of Language_, English trans., pp. 49, 61, 81.

[320] “When we remember the inarticulate clicks which still form part of the Bushman’s language, it would seem as if no line of division could be drawn between man and beast, even when language is made the test” (Sayce, _Introduction, &c._, ii., p. 302).

[321] _Ursprung der Sprache_, s. 52.

[322] _Introduction, &c._, ii., 302: by “thought” of course he means what I mean by recepts.

[323] Here also compare the first of the three hypotheses, the important elements of truth in which are, as I have already more than once observed, to be considered as adopted by Mr. Darwin’s hypothesis, and therefore also by the present one.

[324] The song of the gibbon has already been alluded to in a quotation from Darwin. I may here add that the chimpanzee “Sally” not unfrequently executes an extraordinary performance of an analogous kind. The song, however, is by no means so “musical.” It is sung without any regard to notation, in a series of rapidly succeeding howls and screams—very loud, and accompanied by a drumming of the legs upon the ground. She will only thus “break forth into singing” after more or less sustained excitement by her keeper; but more often than not she refuses to be provoked by any amount of endeavour on his part.

[325] Compare quotations from the German philologists in support of the first hypothesis, pp. 361, 362.

[326] See pp. 288-290.

[327] _Welt als Entwickelung der Geists_, s. 255. This book, however, was not published until 1874—_i.e._ some years after the _Descent of Man_.

[328] This is likewise the view that was ably supported by Geiger on philological grounds, _Ursprung der Sprache_, 1869; and by Haeckel on grounds of general reasoning, _History of Creation_, English trans., 1876.

[329] “How many of the roots of language were formed in this way it is impossible to say; but when we consider that there is no modern word which we can derive from such cries as the sailor makes when he hauls a rope, or the groom when he cleans a horse, it does not seem likely that they can have been very numerous” (Sayce, _Introduction, &c._, i., p. 110).

[330] With regard to the erect attitude, we must remember that, although the chimpanzee and orang never adopt it, the only other kinds of anthropoid apes—namely, gorilla and gibbon—frequently do so when progressing on level surfaces. In the case of the gorilla, indeed, although the fore-limbs quit the ground and the locomotion thus becomes bipedal, the body is never fully straightened up; but in the case of the gibbon the erect attitude may be said to be complete when the animal is walking. (Huxley, _Man’s Place in Nature_, pp. 36-49). With regard to the selection and use of stones as tools, Commander Alfred Carpenter, R.N., thus describes the _modus operandi_ of monkeys inhabiting islands off S. Burmah:—“The rocks at low-water are covered with oysters. The monkeys select stones of the best shape for their purpose from shingle of the beach, and carry them to the low-water mark, where the oysters live, which may be as far as eighty yards from the beach. This monkey has chosen the easiest way to open the rock-oyster, namely, to dislocate the valves by a blow on the base of the upper one, and to break the shell over the attaching muscle” (_Nature_, vol. xxxvi., p. 53. In connection with this subject see also _Animal Intelligence_, p. 481).

[331] See above, p. 220.

[332] See pp. 220-222.

[333] See pp. 179-181.

[334] See above, pp. 300, 301.

[335] Whitney.

[336] Sayce.

[337] Farrar.

[338] Garnett.

[339] Sayce.

[340] Max Müller.

[341] See especially _Science of Thought_, chaps, ii. and iv. The following quotations may suffice to justify this statement. “If once a genus has been rightly recognized as such, it seems to me self-contradictory to admit that it could ever give rise to another genus.... Once a sheep always a sheep, once an ape always an ape, once a man always a man.... What seems to me simply irrational is to look for a fossil ape as the father of a fossil man.... Why should it be the settled or ready-made Pithecanthropus who became the father of the first man, though everywhere else in nature what has once become settled remains settled, or, if it varies, it varies within definite limits only? (pp. 212-215).... If the germ of a man never develops into an ape, nor the germ of an ape into a man, why should the full-grown ape have developed into a man? (p. 117).... Let us now see what Darwin himself has to say in support of his opinion that man does not date from the same period which marks the beginning of organic life on earth—that he has not an ancestor of his own, like the other great families of living beings, but that he had to wait till the mammals had reached a high degree of development, and that he then stepped into the world as the young or as the child of an ape” (p. 160), &c., &c. So far as can be gathered from these, and other statements to the same effect, it does not appear that Professor Max Müller can ever have quite understood the theory of evolution, even in its application to plants and animals. For these are not criticisms upon that theory: they are failures to appreciate in what it is that the theory itself consists.

[342] _Ursprung der Sprache_, s. 84.

[343] _Ursprung der Sprache_, s. 119.

[344] It would be no answer to say that by “names” he means only signs of ideas which present a conceptual value—or, in other words, that he would refuse to recognize as a name what I have called a denotative sign. For the question here is not one of terminology, but of psychology. I care not by what terms we designate these different sorts of signs; the question is whether or not they differ from one another in kind. If the term “name” is expressly reserved for signs of conceptual origin, it would be no argument, upon the basis of this definition, to say that there cannot be names without concepts; for, in terms of the definition, this would merely be to enunciate a truism: it would be merely to say that without concepts there can be no concepts, nor, _à fortiori_, the signs of them. In short, the issue is by no means one as to a definition of terms; it is the plain question whether or not a non-conceptual sign is the precursor of a conceptual one. And this is the question which I cannot find that Max Müller has adequately faced.

[345] _Ursprung der Sprache_, s. 91. The exact words are, “Die Sprache hat die Vernunft erschaffen: vor ihr war der Mensch vernunftlos.” It is needless to observe that the word which I have rendered by its English equivalent “Reason” is here used in the sense of conceptual thought.

[346] Wundt, _Vorlesungen, &c._, ii. 282.

End of Project Gutenberg's Mental Evolution in Man, by George John Romanes