54. Problems of the Relation of Language and Culture
This association of language and civilization, or let us say the linguistic and non-linguistic constituents of culture, brings up the problem whether it would be possible for one to exist without the other. Actually, of course, no such case is known. Speculatively, different conclusions might be reached. It is difficult to imagine any generalized thinking taking place without words or symbols derived from words. Religious beliefs and certain phases of social organization also seem dependent on speech: caste ranking, marriage regulations, kinship recognition, law, and the like. On the other hand, it is conceivable that a considerable series of inventions might be made, and the applied arts might be developed in a fair measure by imitation, among a speechless people. Finally there seems no reason why certain elements of culture, such as music, should not flourish as successfully in a society without as with language.
For the converse, a cultureless species of animal might conceivably develop and use a form of true speech. Such communications as “The river is rising,” “Bite it off,” “What do you find inside?” would be within the range of thought of such a species. Why then have even the most intelligent of the brutes failed to develop a language? Possibly because such a language would lack a definite survival value for the species, in the absence of accompanying culture.
On the whole, however, it would seem that language and culture rest, in a way which is not yet fully understood, on the same set of faculties, and that these, for some reason that is still more obscure, developed in the ancestors of man, while remaining in abeyance in other species. Even the anthropoid apes seem virtually devoid of the impulse to communicate, in spite of freely expressing their affective states of mind by voice, facial gesture, and bodily movement. The most responsive to man of all species, the dog, learns to accept a considerable stock of culture in the sense of fitting himself to it: he develops conscience and manners, for example. Yet, however highly bred, he does not hand on his accomplishments to his progeny, who again depend on their human masters for what they acquire. A group of the best reared dogs left to themselves for a few years would lose all their politeness and revert to the predomestic habits of their species. In short, the culture impulse is lacking in the dog except so far as it is instilled by man; and in most animals it can notoriously be instilled only to a very limited degree. In the same way, the impulse toward communication can be said to be wanting. A dog may understand a hundred words of command and express in his behavior fifty shades of emotion; only rarely does he seem to try to communicate information of objective fact. Very likely we are attributing to him even in these rare cases the impulse which we should feel. In the event of a member of the family being injured or lost, it is certain that a good dog expresses his agitation, uneasiness, disturbed attachment; but much less certain is it that he intends to summon help, as we spontaneously incline to believe because such summoning would be our own reaction to the situation.
The history and causes of the development in incipient man of the group of traits that may be called the faculties for speech and civilization remain one of the darkest areas in the field of knowledge. It is plain that these faculties lie essentially in the sphere of what is ordinarily called the mind, rather than in the body, since men and the apes are far more similar in their general physiques than they are in the degree of their ability to use their physiques for non-physiological purposes. Or, if this antithesis of physical and mental seem unfortunate, it might be said that the growth of the faculties for speech and culture was connected more with special developments of the central nervous system than with those of the remainder of the body.