Mental Evolution in Man: Origin of Human Faculty

by George John Romanes

The well-known anecdote told of the poet Hogg may be fitly alluded to in this connection. A Scotch collie was able to understand many things that his master said to him, and, as proof of his ability, his master, while in the shepherd’s cottage, said in as calm and natural tone as possible, “I’m thinking the cow’s in the potatoes.” Immediately the dog, which had been lying half asleep on the floor, jumped up, ran into the potato-field, round the house, and up the roof to take a survey; but finding no cow in the potatoes, returned and lay down again. Some little time afterwards his master said as quietly as before, “I’m sure the cow’s in the potatoes,” when the same scene was repeated. But on trying it a third time, the dog only wagged his tail. Similarly, Sir Walter Scott, among other anecdotes of his bull terrier, says:—“The servant at Ashestiel, when laying the cloth for dinner, would say to the dog as he lay on the mat by the fire, ‘Camp, my good fellow, the sheriff’s coming home by the ford,’ or ‘by the hill;’ and the poor animal would immediately go forth to welcome his master, advancing as far and as fast as he was able in the direction indicated by the words addressed to him.” And numberless other anecdotes of the same kind might be quoted.[81]

But the most remarkable display of the faculty in question on the part of a brute which has happened to fall under my own observation, is that which many other English naturalists must have noticed in the case of the chimpanzee now in the Zoological Gardens. This ape has learnt from her keeper the meanings of so many words and phrases, that in this respect she resembles a child shortly before it begins to speak. Moreover, it is not only particular words and particular phrases which she has thus learnt to understand; she also understands, to a large extent, the combination of these words and phrases in sentences, so that the keeper is able to explain to the animal what it is that he requests her to do. For example, she will push a straw through any particular meshes in the network of her cage which he may choose successively to indicate by such phrases as—“The one nearest your foot; now the one next the key-hole; now the one above the bar,” &c., &c. Of course there is no pointing to the places thus verbally designated, nor is any order observed in the designation. The animal understands what is meant by the words alone, and this even when a particular mesh is named by the keeper remarking to her the accident of its having a piece of straw already hanging through it.

In connection with the subject of the present treatise it appears to me difficult to overrate the significance of these facts. The more that my opponents maintain the fundamental nature of the connection between speech and thought, the greater becomes the importance of the consideration that the higher animals are able in so surprising a degree to participate with ourselves in the understanding of words. From the analogy of the growing child we well know that the understanding of words precedes the utterance of them, and therefore that the condition to the attainment of conceptual ideation is given in this higher product of receptual ideation. Surely, then, the fact that not a few among the lower animals (especially elephants, dogs, and monkeys) demonstrably share with the human infant this higher excellence of receptual capacity, is a fact of the largest significance. For it proves at least that these animals share with an infant those qualities of mind, which in the latter are immediately destined to serve as the vehicle for elevating ideation from the receptual to the conceptual sphere: the faculty of understanding words in so considerable a degree brings us to the very borders of the faculty of using words with an intelligent appreciation of their meaning.

Familiarity with the facts now before us is apt to blunt this their extraordinary significance; and therefore I invite my opponents to reflect how differently my case would have stood, supposing that none of the lower animals had happened to have been sufficiently intelligent thus to understand the meanings of words. How much greater would then have been the argumentative advantage of any one who undertook to prove the distinctively human prerogative of the Logos. No mere brute, it might have been urged, has ever displayed so much as the first step in approaching to this faculty: from its commencement to its termination the faculty belongs exclusively to mankind. But, as matters actually stand, this cannot be urged: the lower animals share with us the order of ideation which is concerned in the understanding of words—and words, moreover, so definite and particular in meaning as is involved in explaining the particular mesh in a large piece of wire-netting through which it is required that a straw shall be protruded. While watching this most remarkable performance on the part of the chimpanzee, I felt more than ever disposed to agree with the great philologist Geiger, where he says “there is scarcely a more wonderful relationship upon the earth than this accession [i.e. the understanding of words] by the intelligence of animals to that of man.”[82]

I take it then, as certainly proved, that the germ of the sign-making faculty which is present in the higher animals is so far developed as to enable these animals to understand not merely conventional gestures, but even articulate sounds, irrespective of the tones in which they are uttered. Therefore, in view of this fact, together with the fact previously established that these same animals frequently make use of conventional gesture-signs themselves, I think we are justified in concluding a priori, that if these animals were able to articulate, they would employ simple words to express simple ideas. I do not say, nor do I think, that they would form propositions; but it seems to me little less than certain that they would use articulate sounds, as they now use natural or conventional tones and gestures, to express such ideas as they now express in either of these ways. For instance, it would involve the exercise of no higher psychical faculty to say the word “Come,” than it does to pull at a dress or a coat to convey the same idea; or to utter the word “Open,” instead of mewing in a conventional manner before a closed door; or, yet again, to utter the word “Bone,” than to select and carry a card with the word written upon it. If this is so, we must conclude that the only reason why the higher Mammalia do not employ simple words to convey simple ideas, is that which we may term an accidental reason, so far as their psychology is concerned; it is an anatomical reason, depending merely on the structure of their vocal organs not admitting of articulation.[83]

Of course at this point my attention will be called to the case of talking birds; for it is evident that in them we have the anatomical conditions required for speech, though assuredly occurring at a most unlikely place in the animal series; and therefore these animals may be properly adduced to test the validity of my a priori inference—namely, that if the more intelligent brutes could articulate, they would make a proper use of simple verbal signs. Let it, however, be here remembered that birds are lower in the psychological scale than dogs, or cats, or monkeys; and, therefore, that the inference which I drew touching the latter need not necessarily be held as applying also to the former. Nevertheless, it so happens that even in the case of these psychologically inferior animals the evidence, such as it is, is not opposed to my inference: on the contrary, there is no small body of facts which goes to support it in a very satisfactory manner. A consideration of this evidence will now serve to introduce us to the fourth and last case presented in the programme at the beginning of this chapter, or the case of articulation with attribution of the meaning understood as attaching to the words.

Taking, first, the case of proper names, it is unquestionable that many parrots know perfectly well that certain names belong to certain persons, and that the way to call these persons is to call their appropriate names. I knew a parrot which used thus to call its mistress as intelligently as any other member of the household; and if she went from home for a day, the bird became a positive nuisance from its incessant calling for her to come.

And in a similar manner talking birds often learn correctly to assign the names of other pet animals kept in the same house, or even the names of inanimate objects. There can thus be no question as to the use by talking birds of proper names and noun-substantives.

With respect to adjectives, Houzeau very properly remarks that the apposite manner in which some parrots habitually use certain words shows an aptitude correctly to perceive and to name qualities as well as objects. Nor is this anything more than we might expect, seeing, on the one hand, as already shown, that animals possess generic ideas of many qualities, and, on the other, that an obvious quality is as much a matter of immediate observation—and so of sensuous association—as is the object of which it may happen to be a quality.

Again, it is no less certain that many parrots will understand the meaning of active and passive verbs, whether as uttered by others or by themselves. The request to “Scratch Poll” or the announcement “Poll is thirsty,” when intentionally used as signs, show as true an appreciation of the meaning of verbs—or rather, let us say, of verbal signs indicative of actions and states—as is shown by the gesture-sign of a dog or a cat in pulling one’s dress to indicate “come,” or mewing before an open door to signify “open.”