All this, no doubt, has its humorous side, and I have tried to answer it good-humoredly. But it seems to me that it also has a very serious import. Why is there all this wrangling as to whether man is the descendant of a lower animal or not? Why cannot people examine the question in a temper more consonant with a real love of truth? Why look for artificial barriers between man and beast, if they are not there? Why try to remove real barriers, if they are there? Surely we shall remain what we are, whatever befall. When we throw the question back into a very distant antiquity, all seems to grow confused and out of focus. Yet time and space make little difference in the solution of these problems. Let us see what exists to-day. We see to-day that the lowest of savages—men whose language is said to be no better than the clucking of hens, or the twittering of birds, and who have been declared in many respects lower even than animals, possess this one specific characteristic, that if you take one of their babies, and bring it up in England, it will learn to speak as well as any English baby, while no amount of education will elicit any attempts at language from the highest animals, whether bipeds or quadrupeds. That disposition cannot have, been formed by definite nervous structures, congenitally framed, for we are told by the best Agriologists that both father and mother clucked like hens. This fact, therefore, unless disproved by experiment, remains, whatever the explanation may be.
Let us suppose, then, that myriads of years ago there was, out of myriads of animal beings, one, and one only, which made that step which in the end led to language, while the whole rest of the creation remained behind;—what would follow? That one being then, like the savage baby now, must have possessed something of his own—a germ very imperfect, it may be, yet found nowhere else, and that germ, that capacity, that disposition—call it what you like—is, and always will remain the specific difference of himself and all his descendants. It makes no difference whether we say it came of itself, or it was due to environment, or it was the gift of a Being in whom we live and move. All these are but different expressions for the Unknown. If that germ of the Logos had to pass through thousands of forms, from the Protogenes to Adam, before it was fit to fulfill its purpose, what is that to us? It was there potentiâ from the beginning; it manifested itself where it was, in the paulo-post-future man; it never manifested itself where it was not, in any of the creatures that were animals from the beginning, and remained so to the end.
Surely, even if all scholastic philosophy must now be swept away, if to be able to reduce all the wisdom of the past to a tabula rasa is henceforth to be the test of a true philosopher, a few landmarks may still be allowed to remain, and we may venture to quote, for instance, Ex nihilo nihil fit, without being accused of trying to crush free inquiry by an appeal to authority. Language is something, it pre-supposes something; and that which it pre-supposes, that from which it sprang, whatever its pre-historic, pre-mundane, pre-cosmic state may have been, must have been different from that from which it did not spring. People ask whether that germ of language was “slowly evolved,” or “divinely implanted,” but if they would but lay a firm grip on their words and thoughts, they would see that these two expressions, which have been made the watchwords of two hostile camps, differ from each other dialectically only.
That there is in us an animal—aye, a bestial nature—has never been denied; to deny it would take away the very foundation of Psychology and Ethics. We cannot be reminded too often that all the materials of our knowledge we share with animals; that, like them, we begin with sensuous impressions, and then, like ourselves, and like ourselves only, proceed to the General, the Ideal, the Eternal. We cannot be reminded too often that in many things we are like the beasts of the field, but that, like ourselves, and like ourselves only, we can rise superior to our bestial self, and strive after what is Unselfish, Good, and God-like. The wing by which we soar above the Sensuous, was called by wise men of old the Logos; the wing which lifts us above the Sensual, was called by good men of old the Daimonion. Let us take continual care, especially within the precincts of the Temple of Science, lest by abusing the gift of speech or doing violence to the voice of conscience, we soil the two wings of our soul, and fall back, through our own fault, to the dreaded level of the Gorilla.
Footnotes to Chapter VIII (IX):
Reply to Mr. Darwin
[1.] “The vast number of grammatical forms has had a stratified origin. As on the surface of the earth older and younger layers of stones are found one above the other, or one by the side of the other, We had similar appearances in language at any time of its existence.” Curtius, Zur Chronologie, p. 14.
[2.] See Academy, 19 June, 1875.
[3.] As it has been objected that I had no right to claim Dr. Whewell’s authority in support of my classification, I may here add a passage from a letter (Nov. 4, 1861) addressed to me by Dr. Whewell, in which he fully approves of my treating the Science of Language as one of the physical sciences. “You have more than once done me the honor, in your lectures, of referring to what I have written but it seems to me possible that you may not have remarked how completely I agree with you in classing the Science of Language among the physical sciences, as to its history and structure.”
[4.] Antikritik, Wie einer den Nagel auf den Kopf trifft: Berl. 1874.
[5.] Cf. Sachs’ Botany, p. 830.