Mental Evolution in Man: Origin of Human Faculty

by George John Romanes

As noticed in a previous chapter, our system of coinage, bank-notes, and bills of sale is a more convenient system of signifying value of labour or of property, than is the more primitive and less conventional system of actually exchanging the labour or bartering the property; and our system of arithmetic is similarly more convenient for the purpose of calculation than is the more natural system of counting on the fingers. But not only are these more conventional systems more convenient; they are likewise conducive to a higher development of business transactions on the one hand, and of calculation on the other. In the absence of such an improved system of signs, it would be impossible to conduct as many or such intricate transactions and calculations as we do conduct. Similarly with speech as distinguished from gesture. Words, like gestures, are signs of thoughts and feelings; but in being more conventional they are more pure as signs, and so admit of being wrought up into a much more convenient or efficient system, while at the same time they become more constructive in their influence upon ideation. The great superiority of words over gestures in both these respects may most easily be shown by the use of a few examples.

I open Colonel Mallery’s book at random, and find the following as the sign for a barking dog:—

“Pass the arched hand forward from the lower part of the face, to illustrate elongated nose and mouth; then, with both forefingers extended, remaining fingers and thumbs closed, place them upon either side of the lower jaw, pointing upwards, to show lower canines, at the same time accompanying the gesture with an expression of withdrawing the lips so as to show the teeth snarling; then, with the fingers of the right hand extended and separated throw them quickly forward and slightly upward (voice or talking).”

Here, be it observed, how elaborate is this pictorial method of designating a dog barking as compared with the use of two words; and after all it is not so efficient, for the signs were misunderstood by the Indians to whom they were shown—the meaning assigned to them being that of a growling bear. What a large expenditure of thought is required for the devising and the interpretation of such ideograms! and, when they are formed and understood, how cumbersome do they appear if contrasted with words! Colonel Mallery, indeed, says of gesture-language that, “when highly cultivated, its rapidity on familiar subjects exceeds that of speech, and approaches to that of thought itself;” but, besides the important limitation “on familiar subjects,” he adds,—“at the same time it must be admitted that great increase in rapidity is chiefly obtained by the system of preconcerted abbreviations before explained, and by the adoption of arbitrary forms, in which naturalness is sacrificed and conventionality established.”[89]

But besides being cumbersome, gesture-language labours under the more serious defect of not being so precise, and the still more serious defect of not being so serviceable as spoken language in the development of abstraction. We have previously seen how words, being more or less purely conventional as signs, are not tied down, as it were, to material objects; although they have doubtless all originated as expressive of sensuous perceptions, not being necessarily ideographic, they may easily pass into signs of general ideas, and end by becoming expressive of the highest abstractions. “Words are thus the easily manipulated counters of thought,” and so, to change the metaphor, are the progeny of generalization. But gestures, in being always more or less ideographic, are much more closely chained to sensuous perceptions; and, therefore, it is only when exercised on “familiar subjects” that they can fairly be said to rival words as a means of expression, while they can never soar into the thinner medium of high abstraction. No sign-talker, with any amount of time at his disposal, could translate into the language of gesture a page of Kant.

Let it be observed that I am here speaking of gesture-language as we actually find it. What the latent capabilities of such language may be is another question, and one with reference to which speculation is scarcely calculated to prove profitable. Nevertheless, as the subject is not altogether without importance in the present connection, I may quote the following brief passage from a recent essay by Professor Whitney. After remarking that “the voice has won to itself the chief and almost exclusive part in communication,” he adds:—

“This is not in the least because of any closer connection of the thinking apparatus with the muscles that act to produce audible sounds than with those that act to produce visible motions; not because there are natural uttered names for conceptions, any more than natural gestured names. It is simply a case of ‘survival of the fittest,’ or analogous to the process by which iron has become the exclusive material of swords, and gold and silver for money: because, namely, experience has shown this to be the material best adapted to this special use. The advantages of the voice are numerous and obvious. There is first its economy, as employing a mechanism that is available for little else, and leaving free for other purposes those indispensable instruments, the hands. Then there is its superior perceptibleness; its nice differences impress themselves upon the sense at a distance at which visible motions become indistinct; they are not hidden by intervening objects; they allow the eyes of the listeners as well as the hands of the speaker to be employed in other useful work; they are as plain in the dark as in the light; and they are able to catch and command the attention of one who is not to be reached in any other way.”[90]

To these advantages we may add that words, in being as we have seen less essentially ideographic than gestures, must always have been more available for purposes of abstract expression. We must remember how greatly gesture-language, as it now appears in its most elaborate form, is indebted to the psychologically constructing influence of spoken language; and, thus viewed, it is a significant fact that even now gesture language is not able to convey ideas of any high degree of abstraction. Still, I doubt not it would be possible to construct a wholly conventional system of gestures which should answer to, or correspond with, all the abstract words and inflections of a spoken language; and that then the one sign-system might replace the other—just as the sign-system of writing is able similarly to replace that of speech. This, however, is a widely different thing from supposing that such a perfect system of gesture-signs could have grown by a process of natural development; and, looking to the essentially ideographic character of such signs, I greatly question whether, even under circumstances of the strongest necessity (such as would have arisen if man, or his progenitors, had been unable to articulate), the language of gesture could have been developed into anything approaching a substitute for the language of words.

It may tend to throw some light on this hypothetical question—which is of some importance for us—if we consider briefly the psychological status of wholly uneducated deaf-mutes; for although it is true that their case is not fairly parallel to that of a human race destitute of the faculty of speech (seeing that the individual deaf-mute does not find any elaborate system of signs prepared for him by the exertions of dumb ancestors, as would doubtless have been the case under the circumstances supposed), still, on the other hand, and as a compensating consideration, we must remember that the individual deaf-mute not only inherits a human brain, the structure of which has been elaborated by the speech of his ancestors, but is also surrounded by a society the whole structure of whose ideation is dependent upon speech. So far, therefore, as the complex conditions of the question admit of being disentangled, the case of uneducated deaf-mutes living in a society of speaking persons affords the best criterion we can obtain of the prospect which gesture-language would have had as a means of thought-formation in the human race, supposing this race to have been destitute of the faculty of speech. To show, therefore, the psychological condition of an individual thus circumstanced, I will quote a brief passage from a lecture of my own, which was given before the British Association in 1878.