It was in the same Royal Institution that I first raised my voice against the thoughtless extravagances of the so-called Darwinian School, and this at a time when it required more courage to express a doubt on any Darwinian theories than to doubt the descent of all languages from Hebrew. As to Darwin himself, I had expressed my admiration of him in my very first course of lectures, and I had more particularly tried to show how the idea of evolution, or development, or growth, or whatever name we like to use instead of the name of history, had at all times been the guiding principle in the researches of the students of the “Science of Languages.” Our object had always been to discover how languages came to be what they are, to study the origin and growth, or more truly the history of language. If we spoke of the development or evolution of language (Entwickelung) it was simply in order to avoid the constant use of the same word. We comparative philologists had, in fact, been talking evolution for more than forty years, as M. Jourdain had been talking prose all his life, without being aware of it (sans que j’en susse rien). But we never went into raptures about that blessed word “evolution,” or about the passage from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous.
What I, from my own point of view, valued particularly in Darwin’s philosophy was the technical term of Natural Selection. Logically it was not quite correct, for, say what you like, selection presupposes a selector. Without a selector there is no selection, and unless we speak mythologically, we cannot speak of Nature as a selector. I should have preferred, therefore, Rational Elimination, looking upon Reason, or the Good of Plato, as the power that works for good or for fitness in all that survives or is not crowded out. But with this restriction Natural Selection was the very term we wanted to signify that process which is constantly going on in language—“excluding caprice as well as necessity, including individual exertion as well as general co-operation, applicable neither to the unconscious building of bees nor to the conscious architecture of human beings, yet combining within itself both these operations, and raising them to a higher conception.”[[14]] Natural selection was the very term we wanted for a true insight into the so-called growth of language, and it was Darwin who gave it us, even though for our own purposes we had to define it more strictly.
I gave Darwin full credit for having discovered and popularised this new “category of thought,” but the constant hallelujahs that were raised over the discovery of Evolution showed surely an extraordinary ignorance of the history of philosophical thought in Europe. Darwin himself was the very last person to claim evolution as a discovery of his own; but is there a single paper that has not called him the discoverer of Evolution? He knew too well how, particularly in his own special field of study, the controversy whether each so-called genus or species had required a separate act of creation, had been raging for centuries. He remembered the famous controversy in 1830 at the French Institute, between Cuvier and Geoffray Saint-Hilaire, and Goethe’s equally famous remarks on the subject. It would seem as if Darwin himself had originally been under the spell of the old idea that every species, if not every individual, required a special act of creation, and he describes, if I remember rightly, the shock it gave him when he saw for the first time that this idea had to be surrendered. It was evidently considered to be the orthodox view of creation, though I do not know why; nay, it seems to be so still, if we remember how the present Archbishop of Canterbury was represented as unfit to wear a mitre because he believed in evolution; that is, as I should say, in his senses. I myself, on the contrary, was given to understand at the time by my unorthodox friends that my want of belief in evolution was but a survival of my orthodox opinions. I was much puzzled before I could understand why I was looked at askance, till in one of the reviews I was told in so many words that if I did not believe in evolution, I must believe in the theory of special creations, or in nothing at all. Even Tyndall, dear honest Tyndall, told me one day at the Royal Institution that it was no use my kicking against the pricks, and I then had an opportunity of telling him my mind. “When some substance is brought you,” I said, “don’t you first of all analyse it to find out what it consists of, before you use it for any further experiments? Well, that is really what a student of language does. When you bring him a word like evolution, the first thing he asks for is an analysis or definition. That may often seem very discourteous, but it cannot be otherwise in any decent laboratory of chemistry or thought. Now if evolution is meant for an action, you cannot have an action without an actor, whether his action is direct or indirect. Of course you will say that we all know that, that it is mere childish logic; but, if so, we should not imagine that we can neglect this childish logic with impunity, that we can have a successful experiment without first wiping our crucibles clean. If, on the contrary, evolution is to be taken in the sense of a process excluding an actor or evolver, this should be clearly stated, and in that case the more familiar word ‘growth’ would have been far preferable, because it would not have raised unfounded expectations. But even growth means very little unless it is authenticated by history step by step.
“If then you tell me that there is growth, not only from the sperm to men like you and me, not only from an egg to a caterpillar, from a caterpillar to a chrysalis, and from a chrysalis to a butterfly, but likewise from inorganic to organised matter, from plants to animals, from reptiles to birds, from apes to men, I have not a word to say against it. I know you to be an honest man, and if you can assure me that there are historical facts, real, visible facts, to support this transition from one species to another, or even from one genus to another, I trust you. It would be simple arrogance were I to doubt your word, within your own special sphere of study. You have seen the transition or connecting links, you know that it is not only possible, but real, and there is an end of it. Only allow me to say that from a philosophical point of view there is nothing new in this concept of growth, or, as you call it, evolution. You would never say that Lamarck had been the discoverer of growth in nature, neither has it any definite meaning to me when you say that Darwin was the discoverer of evolution. I can understand enough of Darwin’s ‘Origin of Species’ to enable me to admire his power of observation and his true genius of combination. I can see how he has reduced the number of unnecessary species, and of unnecessary acts of so-called special creation; and that possibly he has traced back the whole of the animal and vegetable kingdoms to four beginnings, and in the end to one Creator. Darwin did not go beyond this, he required four beginnings and one Creator. It was left to his followers to carry out his principles, as they thought, by eliminating the Creator, and reducing the four beginnings to one. If you think that all this rests on well ascertained facts, I have nothing to say except to express my surprise that some men of great learning and undoubted honesty are not so positive as to these facts as you are. But with the exception of a Creator, that is, a subjective Author of the universe, all this is really outside my special province, and I could afford to be silent. Only when Darwin maintains the transition from some highly developed animal into a human being, I say, Stop! Here the student of language has a word to say, and I say that language is something that, even in its most rudimentary form, puts an impassable barrier between beast and man.”
Soon after, when I had been asked to give a new course of lectures at the Royal Institution, I had selected this very point, the barrier which language forms between man and brute, for my subject, and as Darwin’s “Descent of Man” was then occupying the thoughts of philosophers, I promised to give a course of lectures on “Darwin’s Philosophy of Language.” Entertaining, as I did, a sincere admiration for Darwin, I felt that it would have been even discourteous to attempt to be courteous to such a man by passing over in silence what he had said on language. This kind of courtesy is most offensive to a true man of science. Otherwise nothing would have been easier than to find antagonists for my purpose, beginning with Epicurus and ending with Mr. H. Wedgwood’s “Etymological Dictionary of the English Language” (second edition, 1872). It so happened that the author of that dictionary was a friend of Darwin’s, and had easily persuaded him that interjections and imitations of natural sounds formed the material elements of all human speech, and that, as certain animals barked, and mocking birds and parrots imitated sounds which they heard, there seemed to be no reason whatever why animals in a few millions of years should not have invented a language of their own. This naturally fell in with Darwin’s own views and wishes, and though he always spoke with great reserve on the subject of language, yet he would have been more than human if he had surrendered his conviction of the descent of man from some kind of animal on account of this, as his friend had assured him, so easily removable barrier of language. Given a sufficient number of years, he thought, and why should not bow-wow and pooh-pooh have evolved into “I bark” and “I despise”? The fact that no animal had ever evolved such words could not be denied, but it could be ignored, or explained away by evidence clearly showing that animals communicated with each other; as if to communicate were the same as to speak. My object in my lectures (published at the time in Longman’s Magazine) was to show that no such transition from pooh-pooh to I despise is possible; nay, that even the first step, the formation of roots, that is, of general concepts out of single sounds, that is, single percepts, is beyond the power of any animal, except the human animal. Even now it is only the human baby or puppy that can learn to imitate human language, and what is the mere learning of a language, compared with the creation of language, which was the real task of those human animals that became men? In all the arguments which I used in support of my theory—a theory no longer controverted, I believe, by any competent and independent scholar and thinker—I never used a single disrespectful word about Mr. Darwin. But for all that I was supposed to have blasphemed, again not by Mr. Darwin himself, but by those who called themselves his bulldogs. I was actually suspected of having written that notorious article in The Quarterly Review which gave such just offence to Darwin. Darwin himself was above all this, and I have his letter in which he writes, 5th January, 1875:—
I have just read the few first pages of your article in The Contemporary Review, and I hope that you will permit me to say that neither I, nor my son, ever supposed that you were the author of the review in the Quarterly. You are about the last man in England to whom I should have attributed such a review. I know it was written by Mr. M., and the utterly false and base statements contained in it are worthy of the man.
But what was better still, Mr. Darwin gave me an opportunity of discussing the facts and arguments which stood between him and me in a personal interview. Sir John Lubbock took me to see the old philosopher at his place, Down, Beckenham, Kent, and there are few episodes in my life which I value more. I need not describe the simplicity of his house, and the grandeur of the man who had lived and worked in it for so many years. Darwin gave me a hearty welcome, showed me his garden and his flowers, and then took me into his study, and standing leaning against his desk began to examine me. He said at once that personally he was quite ignorant of the science of language, and had taken his facts and opinions chiefly from his friend, Mr. Wedgwood. I had been warned that Darwin could not carry on a serious discussion for more than about ten minutes or a quarter of an hour, as it always brought on his life-long complaint of sickness. I therefore put before him in the shortest way possible the difficulties which prevented me from accepting the theory of animals forming a language out of interjections and sounds of nature. I laid stress on the fact that no animal, except the human animal, had ever made a step towards generalisation of percepts, and towards roots, the real elements of all languages, as signs of such generalised percepts, and I gave him a few illustrations of how our words for one to ten, for father, mother, sun and moon had really and historically been evolved. That man thus formed a real anomaly in the growth of the animal kingdom, as conceived by him, I fully admitted; but it was impossible for me to ignore facts, and language in its true meaning has always been to my mind a fact that could not be wiped away by argument, as little as the Himalayas could be wiped away with a silk handkerchief even in millions of years. He listened most attentively without making any objections, but before he shook hands and left me, he said in the kindest way, “You are a dangerous man.” I ventured to reply, “There can be no danger in our search for truth,” and he left the room.
He was exactly the man I had imagined, massive in his forehead, kind in his smile, and hardly bent under the burden of his knowledge or the burden of his years. I must give one more of his letters, because my late friend Romanes, who saw it in my album, seems to have entirely misapprehended its meaning. He saw in it a proof of Mr. Darwin’s extraordinary humility. I do not deny his humility, it was extraordinary, and, what is more, it was genuine. All great men know how little they know in comparison with what they do not know. They are humble, they do not only wish to appear so. But I see in Darwin’s letter far more of humour than of humility. I see him chuckling while he wrote it, and though I value it as a treasure, I never looked upon it as a trophy.
Down, Beckenham, Kent,
15th Oct., 1875.