It seems, therefore, that the sounds made by animals, and certain other modes of behaviour, may be regarded as primarily instinctive acts which have been evolved with the biological end of affording suggestive stimuli furthering intercommunication between the members of the social group. Their performance, however, affords data to consciousness, which intelligence makes use of in the guidance of behaviour in accordance with the results of experience. And since the similar acts performed by the socially linked members are in many cases closely connected with emotional states, there arises the further social link of community of feeling—that which, perhaps, more than anything else conduces to community of action and similarity of social behaviour. Occasionally particular sounds or special acts may, through constant and uniform association, indicate particular objects, such as natural enemies. But there does not appear to be convincing evidence of any intentional differentiation of the means of communication, or of any use of sounds for descriptive ends.
Still, just as the instinctive imitation we considered in the last section may be regarded as the precursor, in the animal world, of the reflective and rational imitation of which we may watch the development in children, so may instinctive modes of intercommunication be regarded as supplying the foundations on which deliberate and intentional communication may be based. And here imitation will be a co-operating factor. We see in the early stages of the development of children’s language how large a share simple and direct association takes in the process. For a while, indeed, there seems to be this and nothing more. But gradually there arises a realization of a further import and purpose in the hitherto isolated associations. It is seen that they symbolize elements in that incipiently rational scheme of thought and things which is beginning to take form in the child’s mind. The relationships which hold good within the conscious situations of daily life begin to occupy the focus of attention, and hitherto unappreciated word-sounds are perceived to stand out as signs for these relationships. Of course the relationships[89] are implicit in the conscious situations of the higher animals and of infants. Only by reflection can they become explicit, and rivet the attention. Something is needed to bring them into prominence and focus the mental eye upon them. And descriptive intercommunication supplies this need. If a description, even the simplest, is to be apprehended or presented to the apprehension of others, then the relationships must be rendered explicit. Try to describe an ordinary visual scene, or the most commonplace sequence of events, and see if you can do so without making clear to the mind the relationships involved. The thing is impossible. An infant or a dog cannot understand the simplest possible description, because the words and suffixes which indicate the relationships have no meaning. The words which stand for substantive impressions may have suggestive value through direct association. The word “cat” or “rats” may have for the dog a very definite suggestive value; and hence some people fancy that when they say to their dog, “There is a cat in the garden,” the animal understands what they say. But it is quite sufficient to suppose that the word “cat” has suggestive force, all the rest being for the dog mere surplusage of sound. When we talk to our four-footed companions, how much can they be said to understand of what we say? Perhaps a score of words have for a dog a definitely suggestive value, each associated with some simple object or action. “Out,” “down,” “up,” “walk,” “biscuit,” “cat,” “fetch,” and so forth elicit appropriate responses. Even with these, tone is more suggestive than articulation, and in each word the salient feature is the chief guide. When I said “Whisky,” for example, to my fox-terrier, he would at once sit up and beg; not because his tastes were as depraved as those of his master, but because the isk sound, common both to “Whisky” and “biscuit,” was what had for his ears the suggestive value.
In a paper on the “Speech of Children,”[90] Mr. S. S. Buckman exhibits the animal stage in the incipient speech of the human infant. We cannot here discuss, still less criticize, his paper. One or two examples will serve to illustrate how instinctive sounds may serve as the basis for subsequent speech. He regards ma as primarily a forcible expression of an emotional state. “If the child require attention it makes the loudest noise which it can produce; the parting of the lips and opening of the mouth to the widest extent while the full volume of breath is emitted produces the sound ma.” At first the sound seems to have the value of a simple expression of an emotional state. “But if the infant require attention it is its mother whom it wants, and from whom it receives this attention; therefore ma very soon comes to be recognized as the call for mother, and, by a further step in development, as the name for mother.” Here, if we accept the interpretation, we have the passage from the emission of a sound as the expression of emotion to the use of the sound from its association with a particular object of sense-experience to indicate that object. Similarly, according to Mr. Buckman, with kah. At first “a strong sign of displeasure at anything nasty to the taste,” it passes, we are told, into a symbol for the bad; hence κακός; and is perhaps narrowed down to the particularly offensive κάκκη. Da and ta are regarded as recognition sounds, the former being associated eventually with the father, the latter with strangers. This appears somewhat hypothetical, but, granting the accuracy of Mr. Buckman’s interpretation, these sounds also illustrate again the transition from the expression of an emotion to sounds indicative of particular objects of experience.
Interesting, however, as are such observations on the animal stage of sound-production in the human infant, they do not touch the crucial period in the development of language. Mr. Buckman, indeed, regards as a remarkably dogmatic assertion Professor Max Müller’s dictum that “the one great barrier between the brute and man is language;” and he tells us that “there are more than twelve different words in the language of fowls,” on which assertion, in turn, the distinguished linguist whom he criticizes might have something piquant to say. No doubt the difference of opinion turns on the definition of the word “language.” But if, as is now generally accepted, the sentence and not the word is the distinguishing unit in language, and the copula in some form, explicit or implicit, is the pivot of the sentence, the wisest hen is probably incapable of language. The word becomes an element in language—a word proper—only when it assumes the office of a part of speech, that is to say, a constituent element in an interrelated whole. The animal “word,” if we like so to term it, is an isolated brick; a dozen, or even a couple of hundred such bricks do not constitute a building. Language, properly so called, is the builded structure, be it a palace or only a cottage; hen language, or monkey language, is, at best, so far as we at present have evidence, an unfashioned heap of bricks. It is just because language is the expression of a portion of a scheme of thought that it indicates in the speaker the possession of a rational soul, capable of perceiving and symbolizing the relationships of things as reflected in thought.
Herein lies the practical value, for human advance in mental development, of language as a means of descriptive intercommunication. It renders explicit relationships otherwise merely implicit, and forces them to the front; and since these relationships are the stuff of which knowledge is built—without the realization of which any complex ideal scheme is impossible of attainment—the importance of descriptive intercommunication can scarcely be overestimated. And though there is no conclusive evidence of its occurrence among animals, yet we have in them the instinctive and intelligent basis on which in due course of evolution it may be securely based.
III.—Social Communities of Bees and Ants
Apart from human societies the most noteworthy social communities of animals are found among insects, especially in ants, bees, wasps, and termites. It is true that in the mammalia we find such communities as the troop of apes, the herd of cattle, the pack of wolves, the school of porpoises, the so-called “rookeries” of seals, and the colonies of “prairie dogs” and of beavers; and that among birds there are analogous communities. Undoubtedly the temporary or permanent association of many individuals is in such cases an advantage to the race, and confers mutual benefits on the associates. But in none of these cases is division of labour carried to such a high degree as among the social insects. And it is through such division of labour that the social community reaches its highest expression.
It is a somewhat remarkable fact that in man, where we find the social division of labour brought to a high pitch of perfection, and carried out with great nicety of accommodation to those circumstances which civilization has rendered extremely complicated, there is no organic differentiation of structure among the co-operating individuals; whereas, so low down in the scale of life as the colonial polype, Hydractinia, which is often found growing on the shells occupied by hermit crabs, there are at least three kinds of differentiated individuals: nutritive polypes with mouth and tentacles; mouthless sensitive members; and others whose sole office is reproduction. But these differentiated individuals in the colonial zoophytes are connected at their bases by a common flesh; and the division of labour is a product of organic evolution, and is probably not in any degree determined or guided by consciousness. We may say, then, that the division of labour in the zoophyte is wholly physical, whereas in man it is chiefly conscious or psychical; as is also the bond of union between the several members of the colony. Intermediate between these extremes stand the social insects. In them there is no physical bond of union, for each individual is distinct and separate; the social linkage is in some degree conscious under the conditions of their nurture; and the division of labour is partly conscious, though probably in large degree based on instinctive foundations, and partly the outcome of an organic differentiation of structure seen in the reproductive members and in the sterile workers, as exemplified in the common wood ant (Fig. 24). In some cases the workers themselves may be divided into different castes.
