No student of psychology would deny that each individual has immediate knowledge of his own mind only, but even Mr. G. Darwin reminds Mr. Whitney that, after all, with man we have one additional source of evidence—viz., language; nay, he even doubts whether there may not be others, too. If Mr. Darwin, Jr., grants that, I willingly grant him that the horse’s impression of green—nay, my friend’s impression of green—may be totally different from my own, to say nothing of Daltonism, color-blindness, and all the rest.[7]
After this, I need hardly dwell on the old attempts at proving, by a number of anecdotes, that animals possess conceptual knowledge. The anecdotes are always amusing, and are sure to meet with a grateful public, but for our purpose they have long been ruled out of court. If Mr. Darwin, Jr., should ever pass through Oxford, I promise to show him in my own dog, Waldmann, far more startling instances of sagacity than any he has mentioned, though I am afraid he will be confirmed all the more in his anthropomorphic interpretation of canine intelligence.
Now comes a new appeal ad populum. I had ventured to say that in our days nothing was more strongly to be recommended to young and old philosophers than a study of the history of philosophy. There is a continuity, not only in Nature, but also in the progress of the human mind; and to ignore that continuity, to begin always like Thales or Democritus, is like having a special creation every day. Evolutionists seem to imagine that there is evolution for everything, except for evolutionism. What would chemists say, if every young student began again with the theory of a phlogiston, or every geologist with Vulcanism, or every astronomer with the Ptolemæic system? However, I did not go back very far; I only claimed a little consideration for the work done by such giants as Locke, Hume, Berkeley, and Kant. I expressed a hope that certain questions might be considered as closed, or, if they were to be re-opened, that at least the controversy should be taken up where it was left at the end of the last debate. Here, however, I failed to make any impression. My appeal is stigmatized as “an attempt to crush my adversaries by a reference to Kant, Hume, Berkeley, and Locke.” And the popular tribune finishes with the following brave words: “Fortunately we live in an age, which (except for temporary relapses) does not pay any great attention to the pious founders, and which tries to judge for itself.”
I never try to crush my adversaries by deputy. Kant, Hume, Berkeley, and Locke may all be antiquated for all I know; but I still hold it would be useful to read them, before we declare too emphatically that we have left them behind.
I cannot deny myself the satisfaction of quoting on this point the wise and weighty words of Huxley:—
“It is much easier to ask such questions than to answer them, especially if one desires to be on good terms with one’s contemporaries: but, if I must give an answer, it is this: The growth of physical science is now so prodigiously rapid, that those who are actively engaged in keeping up with the present, have much ado to find time to look at the past, and even grow into the habit of neglecting it. But, natural as this result may be, it is none the less detrimental. The intellect loses, for there is assuredly no more effectual method of clearing up one’s own mind on any subject than by talking it over, so to speak, with men of real power and grasp who have considered it from a totally different point of view. The parallax of time helps us to the true position of a conception, as the parallax of space helps us to that of a star. And the moral nature loses no less. It is well to turn aside from the fretful stir of the present, and to dwell with gratitude and respect upon the services of those mighty men of old who have gone down to the grave with their weapons of war, but who, while they yet lived, won splendid victories over ignorance.”
Next follow some extraordinary efforts on Mr. Whitney’s part to show that Locke, whose arguments I had simply re-stated, knew very little about human or animal understanding, and then the threadbare argument of the deaf and dumb is brushed up once more. Until something new is said on that old subject, I must be allowed to remain myself deaf and dumb.[8]
Then comes the final and decisive charge. I had said that “if the science of language has proved anything, it has proved that conceptual or discursive thought can be carried on in words only.” Here again I had quoted a strong array of authorities—not, indeed, to kill free inquiry—I am not so bloodthirsty, as my friends imagine—but to direct it to those channels where it had been carried on before. I quoted Locke, I quoted Schelling, Hegel, Wilhelm von Humboldt, Schopenhauer, and Mansel—philosophers diametrically opposed to each other on many points, yet all agreeing in what seems to many so strange a doctrine, that conceptual thought is impossible without language (comprehending by language hieroglyphic, numerical, and similar symbols). I might have quoted many other thinkers and poets. Professor Huxley seems clearly to have seen the difference between trains of thought and trains of feelings. “Brutes,” he says, “though, from the absence of language, they can have no trains of thoughts, but only trains of feelings, yet have a consciousness which, more or less distinctly, foreshadows our own.” And who could express the right view of language more beautifully than Jean Paul?—
“Mich dünkt, der Mensch würde sich, so wie das spracblose Thier, das in der äussern Welt, wie in einem dunkeln, betäubenden Wellen-Meere schwimmt, ebenfalls in dem vollgestirnten Himmel der äussern Anschauung dumpf verlieren, wenn er das verworrene Leuchten nicht durch Sprache in Sternbilder abtheilte, und sich durch diese das Ganze in Theile für das Bewusstein auflösete.”
Having discussed that question very fully in my Lectures, I shall attempt no more at present than to show that the objections raised by Mr. Darwin, Jr., entirely miss the point. Does he really think that those men could have spent all their lives in considering that question, and never have been struck by the palpable objections raised by him? Let us treat such neighbors, at least like ourselves. I shall, however, do my best to show Mr. Darwin that even I had not been ignorant of these objections. I shall follow him through every point, and, for fear of misrepresenting him, quote his own words:—